

" (■ 



Class f rj jj H j 



Book 






1N°. 



COPYRIGHT DEPO 






LITTLE RIVERS 
HENRY VAN DYKE 



CAMEO EDITION 
<£> 

REVERIES OF A BACHELOR; or, A Book of the Heart. By 
Donald G. Mitchell. With an Etching by Percy Moran. 

DREAM LIFE. A Fable of the Seasons. By Donald G. 
Mitchell With an Etching by Percy Moran. 

OLD CREOLE DAYS. By George W. Cable. With an Etching 
by Percy Moran. 

IN OLE VIRGINIA. By Thomas Nelson Page. With an Etch- 
ing by W. L. Sheppard. 

BITTER-SWEET. A Poem. By J. G.Holland. With an Etch- 
ing by Otto Bacher. 

KATHRINA. A Poem. By J. G. Holland. With an Etching 
by Otto Bacher. 

LETTERS TO DEAD AUTHORS. By Andrew Lang. With 
an Etched Portrait by S. J. Ferris. 

"VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE." By Robert Louis Stevenson. 
With an Etched Portrait by S. J. Ferris. 

A CHOSEN FEW. Short Stories. By Frank R. Stockton. 
With an Etched Portrait by W. H. W. Bicknell. 

A LITTLE BOOK OF PROFITABLE TALES. By Eugene Field. 
With an Etched Portrait by W. H. W. Bicknell. 

THE REFLECTIONS OF A MARRIED MAN. By Robert 
Grant. With an Etching by W. H. Hyde. 

THE OPINIONS OF A PHILOSOPHER. By Robert Grant. 
With an Etching by W. H. Hyde. 

A WINDOW IN THRUMS. By J. M. Barrie. With an Etch- 
ing by Adrien Marcel. 

AULD LICHT IDYLLS. By J. M. Barrie. With an Etching 
by G. Mercier. 

THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. By Henry van Dyke. With 
an Etching by G. Mercier. 

LITTLE RIVERS. By Henry van Dyke. With an Etching by 
G. Mercier. 

Each, one volume, 16mo. 
Half calf, g.t., $2.75; half levant, $3.50 ; cloth, $1.25. 



LITTLE RIVERS 



B JBooft of JEeeays in 
profitable HMeness 



BY 

HENRY VAN DYKE 



'■ And suppose he take nothing, yet he en- 
joyeth a delighifull walk by pleasant 
Rivers, in sweet Pastures, amongst 
odoriferous Flowers, which gratifie his 
Senses, and delight his Mind; which 
Contentments induce many (who affect 
not Angling) to choose those places of 
pleasure for their summer Recreation 
and Health." 

Col. Kobeet Venables, 
The Experienced Angler. 1662. 



WITH AN BTCHING BY G. MERC1BR 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



l8 97 




O ^ 



T^)3 ) ' 1 



^n 



Copyright, 1895, 1897, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons 



THE DEVINNE PRESS. 



DEDICATION 

To one who wanders by my side 

As cheerfully as waters glide ; 

Whose eyes are brown as woodland streams, 

And very fair and full of dreams ; 

Whose heart is pure as a mountain spring ; 

Whose thoughts like merry rivers sing : 

To her— my little daughter Brooke— 

I dedicate this little book. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Prelude i 

Little Rivers 5 

A Leaf of Spearmint 31 

Ampersand 55 

A Handful of Heather 77 

The Ristigouche from a Horse yacht . . no 

Alpenrosen and Goat's Milk 135 

Au Large 173 

Trout-fishing in the Traun 211 

At the Sign of the Balsam-bough . . . 233 

A Song after Sundown 265 

Index 269 



PRELUDE 



MOM 



AN ANGLER'S WISH 

I 

When tulips bloom in Union Square, 
And timid breaths of vernal air 

Go wandering down the dusty town, 
Like children lost in Vanity Fair ; 

When every long, unlovely row 
Of westward houses stands aglow, 

And leads the eyes toward sunset skies 
Beyond the hills where green trees grow ; 

Then weary seems the street parade, 
And weary books, and weary trade : 
I'm only wishing to go a-fishing; 
For this the month of May was made. 

II 

I guess the pussy-willows now 
Are creeping out on every bough 

Along the brook ; and robins look 
For early worms behind the plough. 

The thistle-birds have changed their dun, 
For yellow coats, to match the sun ; 

And in the same array of flame 
The Dandelion Show's begun. 



LITTLE RIVERS 

The flocks of young anemones 

Are dancing round the budding trees : 

Who can help wishing to go a-fishing 
In days as full of joy as these? 

Ill 

I think the meadow-lark's clear sound 
Leaks upward slowly from the ground, 

While on the wing, the bluebirds ring 
Their wedding-bells to woods around. 

The flirting chewink calls his dear 
Behind the bush ; and very near, 

Where water flows, where green grass grows, 
Song-sparrows gently sing, " Good cheer." 

And, best of all, through twilight's calm 
The hermit-thrush repeats his psalm. 

How much I'm wishing to go a-fishing 
In days so sweet with music's balm! 

IV 

'Tis not a proud desire of mine ; 
I ask for nothing superfine; 

No heavy weight, no salmon great, 
To break the record, or my line : 

Only an idle little stream, 
Whose amber waters softly gleam, 

Where I may wade through woodland shade, 
And cast the fly, and loaf, and dream : 

Only a trout or two, to dart 

From foaming pools, and try my art : 

No more I'm wishing — old-fashioned fishing, 
And just a day on Nature's heart. 



LITTLE RIVERS 



W 



' There's no music like a little river's. It plays the same 
tune (and that's the favourite) over and over again, and 
yet does not weary of it like men fiddlers. It takes the 
mind out of doors ; and though we should be grateful 
for good houses, there is, after all, no house like God's 
out-of-doors. And lastly, sir, it quiets a man down 
like saying his prayers." — Robert Louis Stevenson: 
Prince Otto. 





LITTLE RIVERS 



RIVER is the most human and com- 
panionable of all inanimate things. It 
has a life, a character, a voice of its 
own, and is as full of good fellowship 
as a sugar-maple is of sap. It can talk in various 
tones, loud or low, and of many subjects, grave 
and gay. Under favourable circumstances it will 
even make a shift to sing, not in a fashion that can 
be reduced to notes and set down in black and 
white on a sheet of paper, but in a vague, refresh- 
ing manner, and to a wandering air that goes 

"Over the hills and far away." 

For real company and friendship, there is noth- 
ing outside of the animal kingdom that is com- 
parable to a river. 

I will admit that a very good case can be made 



8 LITTLE RIVERS 

out in favour of some other objects of natural 
affection. For example, a fair apology has been 
offered by those ambitious persons who have 
fallen in love with the sea. But, after all, that is 
a formless and disquieting passion. It lacks solid 
comfort and mutual confidence. The sea is too 
big for loving, and too uncertain. It will not fit 
into our thoughts. It has no personality because 
it has so many. It is a salt abstraction. You 
might as well think of loving a glittering general- 
ity like " the American woman." One would be 
more to the purpose. 

Mountains are more satisfying because they are 
more individual. It is possible to feel a very 
strong attachment for a certain range whose out- 
line has grown familiar to our eyes, or a clear 
peak that has looked down, day after day, upon 
our joys and sorrows, moderating our passions 
with its calm aspect. We come back from our 
travels, and the sight of such a well-known moun- 
tain is like meeting an old friend unchanged. 
But it is a one-sided affection. The mountain is 
voiceless and imperturbable ; and its very loftiness 
and serenity sometimes make us the more lonely. 

Trees seem to come closer to our life. They 
are often rooted in our richest feelings, and our 
sweetest memories, like birds, build nests in their 
branches. I remember, the last time that I saw 
James Russell Lowell (only a few weeks before 
his musical voice was hushed), he walked out 
with me into the quiet garden at Elm wood to say 



LITTLE RIVERS 9 

good-bye. There was a great horse-chestnut tree 
beside the house, towering above the gable, and 
covered with blossoms from base to summit— a 
pyramid of green supporting a thousand smaller 
pyramids of white. The poet looked up at it with 
his gray, pain-furrowed face, and laid his trem- 
bling hand upon the trunk. ' ' I planted the nut, " 
said he, ' ' from which this tree grew. And my 
father was with me and showed me how to 
plant it." 

Yes, there is a good deal to be said in behalf of 
tree-worship ; and when I recline with my friend 
Tityrus beneath the shade of his favourite oak, I 
consent in his devotions. But when I invite him 
with me to share my orisons, or wander alone 
to indulge the luxury of grateful, unlaborious 
thought, my feet turn not to a tree, but to the 
bank of a river, for there the musings of solitude 
find a friendly accompaniment, and human inter- 
course is purified and sweetened by the flowing, 
murmuring water. It is by a river that I would 
choose to make love, and to revive old friendships, 
and to play with the children, and to confess my 
faults, and to escape from vain, selfish desires, 
and to cleanse my mind from all the false and 
foolish things that mar the joy and peace of living. 
Like David's hart, I pant for the water-brooks, 
and would follow the advice of Seneca, who says, 
"Where a spring rises, or a river flows, there 
should we build altars and off er -sacrifices. " 

The personality of a river is not to be found in 



io LITTLE RIVERS 

its water, nor in its shore. Either of these ele- 
ments, by itself, would be nothing. Confine the 
fluid contents of the noblest stream in a walled 
channel of stone, and it ceases to be a stream ; it 
becomes what Charles Lamb calls ' ' a mockery of 
a river— a liquid artifice— a wretched conduit." 
But take away the water from the most beautiful 
river-banks, and what is left? An ugly road with 
none to travel it; a long, ghastly scar on the 
bosom of the earth. 

The life of a river, like that of a human being, 
consists in the union of soul and body, the water 
and the banks. They belong together. They act 
and react upon each other. The stream moulds 
and makes the shore ; hollowing out a bay here, 
and building a long point there ; alluring the little 
bushes close to its side, and bending the tall slim 
trees over its current; sweeping a rocky ledge 
clean of everything but moss, and sending a still 
lagoon full of white arrow-heads and rosy knot- 
weed far back into the meadow. The shore guides 
and controls the stream ; now detaining and now 
advancing it ; now bending it in a hundred sinuous 
curves, and now speeding it straight as a wild-bee 
on its homeward flight ; here hiding the water in 
a deep cleft overhung with green branches, and 
there spreading it out, like a mirror framed in 
daisies, to reflect the sky and the clouds ; some- 
times breaking it with sudden turns and un- 
expected falls into a foam of musical laughter, 



LITTLE RIVERS xi 

sometimes soothing it into a sleepy motion like 
the flow of a dream. 

And is it otherwise with the men and women 
whom we know and like? Does not the spirit 
influence the form, and the form affect the spirit? 
Can we divide and separate them in our affections? 

I am no friend to purely psychological attach- 
ments. In some unknown future they may be 
satisfying, but in the present I want your words 
and your voice with your thoughts, your looks, 
and your gestures to interpret your feelings. 
The warm, strong grasp of Greatheart's hand is 
as dear to me as the steadfast fashion of his friend- 
ships ; the lively, sparkling eyes of the master of 
Rudder Grange charm me as much as the nimble- 
ness of his fancy ; and the firm poise of the Hoosier 
Schoolmaster's shaggy head gives me new confi- 
dence in the solidity of his views of life. I like 
the pure tranquillity of Isabel's brow as well 
as her 

"most silver flow 
Of subtle-paced counsel in distress." 

The soft cadences and turns in my lady Katrina's 
speech draw me into the humour of her gentle 
judgments of men and things. The touches of 
quaintness in Angelica's dress, her folded ker- 
chief and smooth-parted hair, seem to partake of 
herself, and enhance my admiration for the sweet 
order of her thoughts and her old-fashioned ideals 
of love and duty. Even so the stream and its 



i2 LITTLE RIVERS 

channel are one life. I cannot think of the 
swift, brown flood of the Batiscan without its 
shadowing primeval forests, or the crystalline 
current of the Boquet without its beds of pebbles 
and golden sand and grassy banks embroidered 
with flowers. 

Every country — or at least every country that is 
fit for habitation — has its own rivers ; and every 
river has its own quality; and it is the part of 
wisdom to know and love as many as you can, 
seeing each in the fairest possible light, and re- 
ceiving from each the best that it has to give. 
The torrents of Norway leap down from their 
mountain homes with plentiful cataracts, and run 
brief but glorious races to the sea. The streams 
of England move smoothly through green fields and 
beside ancient, sleepy towns. The Scotch rivers 
brawl through the open moorland and flash along 
steep Highland glens. The rivers of the Alps are 
born in icy caves, from which they issue forth with 
furious, turbid waters ; but when their anger has 
been forgotten in the slumber of some blue lake, 
they flow down more softly to see the vineyards 
of France and Italy, the gray castles of Germany, 
and the verdant meadows of Holland. The 
mighty rivers of the West roll their yellow floods 
through broad valleys, or plunge down dark 
canons. The rivers of the South creep under 
dim arboreal archways heavy with banners of 
waving moss. The Delaware and the Hudson 



LITTLE RIVERS 13 

and the Connecticut are the children of the Cats- 
kills and the Adirondacks and the White Moun- 
tains, cradled among the forests of spruce and 
hemlock, playing through a wild woodland youth, 
gathering strength from numberless tributaries to 
bear their great burdens of lumber and turn the 
wheels of many mills, issuing from the hills to 
water a thousand farms, and descending at last, 
beside new cities, to the ancient sea. 

Every river that flows is good, and has some- 
thing worthy to be loved. But those that we love 
most are always the ones that we have known 
best, — the stream that ran before our father's 
door, the current on which we ventured our first 
boat or cast our first fly, the brook on whose 
banks we first picked the twinflower of young 
love. However far we may travel, we come back 
to Naaman's state of mind : " Are not Abana and 
Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the 
waters of Israel? " 

It is with rivers as it is with people : the great- 
est are not always the most agreeable, nor the 
best to live with. Diogenes must have been an 
uncomfortable bedfellow ; Antinoiis was bored to 
death in the society of the Emperor Hadrian ; and 
you can imagine much better company for a walk- 
ing-trip than Napoleon Bonaparte. Semiramis 
was a lofty queen, but I fancy that Ninus had 
more than one bad quarter-of-an-hour with her : 
and in "the spacious times of great Elizabeth" 



i 4 LITTLE RIVERS 

there was many a milkmaid whom the wise man 
would have chosen for his friend, before the royal 
red-haired virgin. " I confess," says the poet 
Cowley, " I love Littleness almost in all things. 
A little convenient Estate, a little chearful House, 
a little Company, and a very little Feast, and if I 
were ever to fall in Love again (which is a great 
Passion, and therefore, I hope, I have done with 
it,) it would be, I think, with Prettiness, rather 
than with Majestical Beauty. I would neither 
wish that my Mistress, nor my Fortune, should 
be a Bona Roba, as Homer uses to describe his 
Beauties, like a daughter of great Jupiter for the 
stateliness and largeness of her Person, but as 
Lticretius says : 

' Parzmla, pumilio, Xapirtav /ou'a, tota memm sal.' " 

Now in talking about women it is prudent to 
disguise a prejudice like this, in the security of a 
dead language, and to entrench it behind a fortress 
of reputable authority. But in lowlier and less 
dangerous matters, such as we are now concerned 
with, one may dare to speak in plain English. I 
am all for the little rivers. Let those who will, 
chant in heroic verse the renown of Amazon and 
Mississippi and Niagara ; but my prose shall flow 
— or straggle along at such a pace as the prosaic 
muse may grant me to attain — in praise of Beaver- 
kill and Neversink and Swiftwater, of Saranac and 
Raquette and Ausable, of Allegash and Aroostook 



LITTLE RIVERS 15 

and Moose River. " Whene'er I take my walks 
abroad," it shall be to trace the clear Rauma from 
its rise on the fjeld to its rest in the fjord; or to 
follow the Ericht and the Halladale through the 
heather. The Ziller and the Salzach shall be my 
guides through the Tyrol; the Rotha and the 
Dove shall lead me into the heart of England. 
My sacrificial flames shall be kindled with birch- 
bark along the wooded still-waters of the Penob- 
scot and the Peribonca, and my libations drawn 
from the pure current of the Ristigouche and the 
Ampersand, and my altar of remembrance shall 
rise upon the rocks beside the falls of Seboomok. 

I will set my affections upon rivers that are not 
too great for intimacy. And if by chance any of 
these little ones have also become famous, like the 
Tweed and the Thames and the Arno, I at least 
will praise them, because they are still at heart 
little rivers. 

If an open fire is, as Charles Dudley Warner 
says, the eye of a room ; then surely a little river 
may be called the mouth, the most expressive 
feature, of a landscape. It animates and enlivens 
the whole scene. Even a railway journey be- 
comes tolerable when the track follows the course 
of a running stream. 

What charming glimpses you catch from the 
window as the train winds along the valley of the 
French Broad from Asneville, or climbs the 
southern Catskills beside the yEsopus, or slides 



1 6 LITTLE RIVERS 

down the Pusterthal with the Rienz, or follows 
the Glommen and the Gula from Christiania to 
Throndhjem. 

Here is a mill with its dripping, lazy wheel, 
the type of somnolent industry; and there is 
a white cascade, foaming in silent pantomime 
as the train clatters by; and here is a long, 
still pool with the cows standing knee-deep in the 
water and swinging their tails in calm indiffer- 
ence to the passing world ; and there is a lone 
fisherman sitting upon a rock, rapt in contempla- 
tion of the point of his rod. For a moment you 
become the partner of his tranquil enterprise. 
You turn around, you crane your neck to get the 
last sight of his motionless angle. You do not 
know what kind of fish he expects to catch, nor 
what species of bait he is using,but none the less do 
you pray that he may have a bite before the train 
swings around the next curve. And if perchance 
your wish is granted, and you see him gravely 
draw some unknown, reluctant, s hining reward of 
patience from the water, you feel like swinging 
your hat from the window and crying out, " Good 
luck!" 

Little rivers seem to have the indefinable qual- 
ity that belongs to certain people in the world, — 
the power of drawing attention without courting 
it, the faculty of exciting interest by their very 
presence and way of doing things. 

The most fascinating part of a city or town is 



LITTLE RIVERS 17 

that through which the water flows. Idlers al- 
ways choose a bridge for their place of meditation 
when they can get it ; and, failing that, you will 
find them sitting on the edge of a quay or em- 
bankment, with their feet hanging over the water. 
What a piquant mingling of indolence and vivacity 
you can enjoy by the river-side! The best point 
of view in Rome, to my taste, is the Ponte San 
Angelo ; and in Florence or Pisa I never tire of 
loafing along the Lung' Arno. You do not know 
London until you have seen it from the Thames. 
And you will miss the charm of Cambridge un- 
less you take a little boat and go drifting on the 
placid Cam, beneath the bending trees, along the 
backs of the colleges. 

But the real way to know a little river is not to 
glance at it here or there in the course of a hasty 
journey, nor to become acquainted with it after it 
has been partly civilized and partly spoiled by too 
close contact with the works of man. You must 
go to its native haunts ; you must see it in youth 
and freedom ; you must accommodate yourself to 
its pace, and give yourself to its influence, and 
follow its meanderings whithersoever they may 
lead you. 

Now, of this pleasant pastime there are three 
principal forms. You may go as a walker, taking 
the river-side path, or making a way for yourself 
through the tangled thickets or across the open 
meadows. You may go as a sailor, launching 



18 LITTLE RIVERS 

your light canoe on the swift current and com- 
mitting yourself for a day, or a week, or a month, 
to the delightful uncertainties of a voyage through 
the forest. You may go as a wader, stepping into 
the stream and going down with it all day long, 
through rapids and shallows and deeper pools, 
until you come to the end of your courage and 
the daylight. Of these three ways I know not 
which is best. But in all of them the essential 
thing is that you must be willing and glad to be 
led ; you must take the little river for your guide, 
philosopher, and friend. 

And what a good guidance it gives you! How 
cheerfully it lures you on into the secrets of field 
and wood, and brings you acquainted with the 
birds and the flowers. The stream can show you, 
better than any other teacher, how Nature works 
her enchantments with colour and music. 

Go out to the Beaverkill 

" In the tassel-time of spring," 

and follow its brimming waters through the bud- 
ding forests, to that corner which we call the 
Painter's Camp. See how the banks are all enam- 
elled with the pale hepatica, the painted trillium, 
and the delicate pink-veined spring beauty. A 
little later in the year, when the ferns are uncurl- 
ing their long fronds, the troops of blue and white 
violets will come dancing down to the edge of the 
stream, and creep venturously out to the very end 
of that long, moss-covered log in the water. Be- 



LITTLE RIVERS 19 

fore these have vanished, the yellow crowfoot and 
the cinquefoil will appear, followed by the star- 
grass and the loose-strife and the golden St.- 
John's-wort. Then the unseen painter will begin 
to mix the royal colour on his palette, and the red 
of the bee-balm will catch your eye. If you are 
lucky, you may find in midsummer the slender, 
fragrant spikes of the purple-fringed orchis, and 
you cannot help finding the somewhat slatternly 
blue blossoms of the universal self-heal. A little 
later, yellow returns in the drooping flowers of 
the jewel-weed, and blue repeats itself in the 
trembling hare-bells, and scarlet is glorified in 
the flaming robe of the cardinal-flower. Later 
still, the summer closes in a splendour of bloom, 
with gentians and asters and goldenrod. 

You never get so close to the birds as when 
you are wading quietly down a little river, casting 
your fly deftly under the branches for the wary 
trout, but ever on the lookout for all the various 
pleasant things that nature has to bestow upon 
you. Here you shall come upon the catbird at 
her morning bath, and hear her sing, in a clump 
of pussy-willows, that low, tender, confidential 
song which she keeps for the hours of domestic 
intimacy. The spotted sandpiper will run along 
the stones before you, crying, " Wet-feet, wet- 
feet! " and bowing and teetering in the friendliest 
manner, as if to show you the way to the best 
pools. In the thick branches of the hemlocks 
that stretch across the stream, the tiny warblers, 



zo LITTLE RIVERS 

dressed in their coats of many colours, chirp and 
twitter confidingly above your head ; and the Mary- 
land yellow-throat, flitting through the bushes like 
a little gleam of sunlight, calls, ' ' Witchery, witch- 
ery, witchery!' 1 '' That plaintive, forsaken, per- 
sistent note, never ceasing, even in the noonday 
silence, comes from the wood-pewee, drooping 
upon the bough of some high tree, and complain- 
ing, like Marianajn the moated grange, " Weary, 
weary, we-a-ry." 

When the stream runs out into the old clear- 
ing, or down through the pasture, you find other 
and livelier birds, — the robin, with his sharp, 
saucy call and breathless, merry warble ; the blue- 
bird, with his notes of pure gladness, and the 
oriole, with his wild, flexible whistle; the che- 
wink, bustling about in the thicket, talking to his 
sweetheart in French, " Cherie, cherie ! " and the 
song-sparrow, perched on his favourite limb of a 
young maple, close beside the water, and singing 
happily, through sunshine and through rain. 
This is the true bird of the brook, after all, the 
winged spirit of cheerfulness and contentment, 
the patron saint of little rivers, the fisherman's 
friend. He seems to enter into your sport with 
his good wishes, and for an hour at a time, while 
you are trying every fly in your book, from a 
black gnat to a white miller, to entice the crafty 
old trout at the foot of the meadow-pool, the song- 
sparrow, close above you, will be chanting pa- 



LITTLE RIVERS 21 

tience and encouragement. And when at last 
success crowns your endeavour, and the parti- 
coloured prize is glittering in your net, the bird 
on the bough breaks out in an ecstasy of congrat- 
ulation: " Catch > im, catch Hm, catch 'im; oh, 
what a pretty fellow I siueetf " 

There are other birds that seem to have a very 
different temper. The blue-jay sits high up in 
the withered pine-tree, bobbing up and down, and 
calling to his mate in a tone of affected sweetness, 
" Sahite-her, sahite-her" but when you come in 
sight he flies away with a harsh cry of " Thief, 
thief, thief! " The kingfisher, ruffling his crest 
in solitary pride on the end of a dead branch, 
darts down the stream at your approach, winding 
up his reel angrily, as if he despised you for in- 
terrupting his fishing. And the catbird, that sang 
so charmingly while she thought herself unob- 
served, now tries to scare you away by screaming 
' ' Snake, snake / " 

As evening draws near, and the light beneath 
the trees grows yellower, and the air is full of 
filmy insects out for their last dance, the voice of 
the little river becomes louder and more distinct. 
The true poets have often noticed this apparent 
increase in the sound of flowing waters at night- 
fall. Gray, in one of his letters, speaks of " hear- 
ing the murmur of many waters not audible in 
the daytime." Wordsworth . repeats the same 
thought almost in the same words : 



22 LITTLE RIVERS 

" A soft and lulling sound is heard 
Of streams inaudible by day." 

And Tennyson, in the valley of Cauteretz, tells 
of the river 

"Deepening his voice with deepening of the night." 

It is in this mystical hour that you will hear 
the most celestial and entrancing of all bird-notes, 
the songs of the thrushes,— the hermit, and the 
wood-thrush, and the veery. Sometimes, but not 
often, you will see the singers. I remember 
once, at the close of a beautiful day's fishing on 
the Swiftwater, I came out just after sunset into 
a little open space in an elbow of the stream. It 
was still early spring, and the leaves were tiny. 
On the top of a small sumac, not thirty feet away 
from me, sat a veery. I could see the pointed 
spots upon his breast, the swelling of his white 
throat, and the sparkle of his eyes, as he poured 
his whole heart into a long liquid chant, the clear 
notes rising and falling, echoing and interlacing 
in endless curves of sound, 

"Orb within orb, intricate, wonderful." 

Other bird-songs can be translated into words, 
but not this. There is no interpretation. It is 
music, — as Sidney Lanier defines it, — 

' ' Love in search of a word." 

But it is not only to the real life of birds and 
flowers that the little rivers introduce you. They 



LITTLE RIVERS 23 

lead you often into familiarity with human nature 
in undress, rejoicing in the liberty of old clothes, 
or of none at all. People do not mince along the 
banks of streams in patent-leather shoes or crepi- 
tating silks. Corduroy and homespun and flannel 
are the stuffs that suit this region; and the fre- 
quenters of these paths go their natural gaits, in 
cow-hide or rubber boots, or bare-footed. The 
girdle of conventionality is laid aside, and the 
skirts rise with the spirits. 

A stream that flows through a country of up- 
land farms will show you many a pretty bit of 
genre painting. Here is the laundry-pool at the 
foot of the kitchen garden, and the tubs are set 
upon a few planks close to the water, and the 
farmer's daughters, with bare arms and gowns 
tucked up, are wringing out the clothes. Do you 
remember what happened to Ralph Peden, in 
The Lilac Stmbonnet, when he came on a 
scene like this? He tumbled at once into love 
with Winsome Charteris, — and far over his 
head. 

And what a pleasant thing it is to see a little 
country lad riding one of the plough-horses to 
water, thumping his naked heels against the ribs 
of his stolid steed, and pulling hard on the halter 
as if it were the bridle of Bucephalus ! Or per- 
haps it is a riotous company of boys that have 
come down to the old swimming-hole, and are 
now splashing and gambolling through the water 



24 LITTLE RIVERS 

like a drove of white seals very much sunburned. 
You had hoped to catch a goodly trout in that 
hole, but what of that? The sight of a harmless 
hour of mirth is better than a fish, any day. 

Sometimes you overtake another fisherman 
on the stream. It may be one of those fabulous 
countrymen, with long cedar poles and bed-cord 
lines ; who are commonly reported to catch such 
enormous strings of fish, but who rarely, so far 
as my observation goes, do anything more than 
fill their pockets with fingerlings. The trained 
angler, who uses the finest tackle, and drops his 
fly on the water as accurately as Henry James 
places a word in a story, is the man who takes the 
most and the largest fish in the long run. Per- 
haps the fisherman ahead of you is such an one, — 
a man whom you have known in town as a lawyer 
or a doctor, a merchant or a preacher, going about 
his business in the hideous respectability of a 
high silk hat and a long black coat. How good 
it is to see him now in the freedom of a flannel 
shirt and a broad-brimmed gray felt with flies 
stuck around the band! 

In Professor John Wilson's Essays Critical 
and Imaginative, there is a brilliant description 
of a bishop fishing, which I am sure is neither 
imaginative nor critical, but realistic and appre- 
ciative. " Thus a bishop, sans wig and petticoat, 
in a 'hairy cap, black jacket, corduroy breeches 
and leathern leggins, creel on back and 
rod in hand, sallying from his palace, impa- 



LITTLE RIVERS 25 

tient to reach a famous salmon-cast ere the 
sun leave his cloud, . . . appears not only a 
pillar of his church, but of his kind, and in such 
a costume is manifestly on the high road to Can- 
terbury and the Kingdom-Come." I have had 
the good luck to see quite a number of bishops, 
parochial and diocesan, in that style, and the vision 
has always dissolved my doubts in regard to the 
validity of their claims to the true apostolic suc- 
cession. 

Men's " little ways " are usually more interest- 
ing, and often more instructive, than their grand 
manners. When they are off guard, they fre- 
quently show to better advantage than when they 
are on parade. I get more pleasure out of 
Boswell's Johnson than I do out of Rasselas 
or The Rambler. The Little Flowers of St. 
Francis appear to me far more precious than the 
most learned German and French analyses of his 
character. There is a passage in Jonathan 
Edwards's Personal Narrative, -about a certain 
walk that he took in the fields near his father's 
house, and the blossoming of the flowers in the 
spring, which I would not exchange for the whole 
of his dissertation On the Freedom of the Will. 
And the very best thing of Charles Darwin's that 
I know is a bit from a letter to his wife : " At last 
I fell asleep," says he, " on the grass, and awoke 
with a chorus of birds singing around me, and 
squirrels running up the tree, and some wood- 
peckers laughing ; and it was as pleasant and rural 



2 6 LITTLE RIVERS 

a scene as ever I saw ; and I did not care one 
penny how any of the birds or beasts had been 
formed." 

Little rivers have small responsibilities. They 
are not expected to bear huge navies on their 
breast or supply a hundred thousand horse-power 
to the factories of a monstrous town. Neither do 
you come to them hoping to draw out Leviathan 
with a hook. It is enough if they run a harm- 
less, amiable course, and keep the groves and 
fields green and fresh along their banks, and offer 
a happy alternation of nimble rapids and quiet 

pools, 

" With here and there a lusty trout, 
And here and there a grayling." 

When you set out to explore one of these minor 
streams in your canoe, you have no intention of 
epoch-making discoveries, or thrilling and world- 
famous adventures. You float placidly down the 
long still-waters, and make your way patiently 
through the tangle of fallen trees that block the 
stream, and run the smaller falls, and carry your 
boat around the larger ones, with no loftier am- 
bition than to reach a good camp-ground before 
dark and to pass the intervening hours pleasantly, 
"without offence to God or man." It is an 
agreeable and advantageous frame of mind for one 
who has done his fair share of work in the world, 
and is not inclined to grumble at his wages. 
There are few moods in which we are more sus- 



LITTLE RIVERS 27 

ceptible of gentle instruction ; and I suspect there 
are many tempers and attitudes, often called vir- 
tuous, in which the human spirit appears less 
tolerable in the sight of Heaven. 

It is not required of every man and woman to 
be, or to do, something great ; most of us must 
content ourselves with taking small parts in the 
chorus, as far as possible without discord. Shall 
we have no little lyrics because Homer and Dante 
have written epics ? And because we have heard 
the great organ at Freiburg, shall the sound of 
Kathi's zither in the alpine hut please us no more? 
Even those who have greatness thrust upon them 
will do well to lay the burden down now and then, 
and congratulate themselves that they are not al- 
together answerable for the conduct of the uni- 
verse, or at least not all the time. " I reckon," 
said a cow-boy to me one day, as we were riding 
through the Bad Lands of Dakota, " there's some 
one bigger than me running this outfit. He can 
'tend to it well enough, while I smoke my pipe 
after the round-up." 

There is such a thing as taking ourselves and 
the world too seriously, or at any rate too anx- 
iously. Half of the secular unrest and dismal, 
profane sadness of modern society comes from the 
vain idea that every man is bound to be a critic 
of life, and to let no day pass without finding some 
fault with the general order of things, or project- 
ing some plan for its improvement. And the other 



28 LITTLE RIVERS 

half comes from the greedy notion that a man's 
life does consist, after all, in the abundance of the 
things that he possesseth, and that it is somehow 
or other more respectable and pious to be always at 
work trying to make a larger living, than it is to lie 
on your back in the green pastures and beside the 
still-waters, and thank God that you are alive. 

Come, then, my gentle reader (for by this time 
you see that this chapter is only a preface in dis- 
guise, — a declaration of principles or of the want of 
them, an apology or a defence, as you choose to 
take it), and if we are agreed, let us walk together ; 
but if not, let us part here without ill will. 

You shall not be deceived in this book. It is 
nothing but a handful of rustic variations on the 
old tune of " Rest and be thankful," a record of 
unconventional travel, a pilgrim's scrip with a 
few bits of blue-sky philosophy in it. There is, 
so far as I know, very little useful information 
and absolutely no criticism of the universe to be 
found in this volume. So if you are what Izaak 
Walton calls " a severe, sour-complexionedman," 
you would better carry it back to the bookseller, 
and get your money again, if he will give it to 
you, and go your way rejoicing after your own 
melancholy fashion. 

But if you care for plain pleasures, and informal 
company, and friendly observations on men and 
things (and a few true fish-stories), then per- 
haps you may find something here not unworthy 



LITTLE RIVERS 29 

your perusal. And so I wish that your winter 
fire may burn clear and bright while you read 
these pages ; and that the summer days may be 
fair, and the fish may rise merrily to your fly, 
whenever you follow one of these little rivers. 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 

RECOLLECTIONS OF A BOY AND 
A ROD 



' It puzzles me now, that I remember all these young im- 
pressions so, because I took no heed of them at the time 
whatever ; and yet they come upon me bright, when 
nothing else is evident in the gray fog of experience." — 
R. D. Blackmore : Lorna Doone. 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 




F all the faculties of the human mind, 
memory is the one that is most easily 
led by the nose. There is a secret 
power in the sense of smell which 
draws the thoughts backward into the pleasant 
land of old times. 

If you could paint a picture of memory in the 
symbolical manner of Quarles's Emblems, it 
should represent a man travelling the highway 
with a dusty pack upon his shoulders, and stoop- 
ing to draw in a long, sweet breath from the 
small, deep-red, golden-hearted flowers of an 
old-fashioned rose-tree straggling through the 
fence of a neglected garden. Or perhaps, for 
a choice of perfumes to accompany memory's 
incantation, you would better take a yet more 
homely and familiar scent: the cool fragrance 
of lilacs drifting through the June morning 
from the old bush that stands between the 



34 LITTLE RIVERS 

kitchen door and the well; the warm layer of 
pungent, aromatic air that floats over the tansy- 
bed in a still July noon ; the drowsy dew of odour 
that falls from the big balm-of-Gilead tree by the 
roadside as you are driving homeward through the 
twilight of August; or, best of all, the clean, 
spicy, unexpected, unmistakable smell of a bed 
of spearmint — that is the bed whereon memory 
loves to lie and dream! 

Why not choose mint as the symbol of remem- 
brance? It is the true spice-tree of our Northern 
clime, the myrrh and frankincense of the land of 
lingering snow. When its perfume rises, the 
shrines of the past are unveiled, and the magical 
rites of reminiscence begin. 



You are fishing down the Swiftwater Brook in 
the early spring. In a shallow pool, which the 
drought of summer will soon change into dry 
land, you see the pale-green shoots of a little 
plant thrusting themselves up between the peb- 
bles, and just beginning to overtop the falling 
water. You pluck a leaf of it as you turn out of 
the stream to find a comfortable place for lunch, 
and, rolling it between your fingers to see whether 
it smells like a good salad for your bread and 
cheese, you discover suddenly that it is new mint. 
For the rest of that day you are bewitched ; you 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 35 

follow a stream that runs through the country of 
Auld Lang Syne, and fill your creel with the 
recollections of a boy and a rod. 

And yet, strangely enough, you cannot recall 
the boy himself at all distinctly. There is only 
the faintest image of him on the endless roll of 
films that has been wound through your mental 
camera; and in the very spots where his small 
figure should appear, it seems as if the pictures 
were always light-struck. Just a blur, and the 
dim outline of a new cap, or a well-beloved jacket 
with extra pockets, or a much-hated pair of copper- 
toed shoes— that is all you can see. 

But the people that the boy saw ; the compan- 
ions who helped or hindered him in his adven- 
tures ; the sublime and marvellous scenes among 
the Catskills and the Adirondacks and the Green 
Mountains, in the midst of which he lived and 
moved and had his summer holidays — all these 
stand out sharp and clear, as the Bab Ballads 
say, 

" Photographically lined 
On the tablets of your mind." 

And most vivid do these scenes and people 
become when the vague and irrecoverable boy 
who walks among them carries a rod over his 
shoulder, and you detect the soft bulginess of wet 
fish about his clothing, and perhaps the tail of a 
big one emerging from his pocket. Then it seems 



36 LITTLE RIVERS 

almost as if these were things that had really hap- 
pened, and of which you yourself were a great part. 

The rod was a reward, yet not exactly of merit. 
It was an instrument of education in the hand of 
a father less indiscriminate than Solomon, who 
chose to interpret the text in a new way, and pre- 
ferred to educate his child by encouraging him in 
pursuits which were harmless and wholesome, 
rather than by chastising him for practices which 
would likely enough never have been thought of 
if they had riot been forbidden. The boy enjoyed 
this kind of father at the time, and later he came 
to understand, with a grateful heart, that there is 
no richer inheritance in all the treasury of un- 
earned blessings. For, after all, the love, the 
patience, the kindly wisdom of a grown man who 
can enter into the perplexities and turbulent im- 
pulses of a boy's heart, and give him cheerful 
companionship, and lead him on by free and joy- 
ful ways to know and choose the things that are 
pure and lovely and of good report, make as fair 
an image as we can find of that loving, patient 
Wisdom which must be above us all if any good 
is to come out of our childish race. 

Now this was the way in which the boy came 
into possession of his undreaded rod. He was 
by nature and heredity one of those predestined 
anglers whom Izaak Walton tersely describes as 
"born so." His earliest passion was fishing. 
His favourite passage in Holy Writ was that place 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 37 

where Simon Peter throws a line into the sea and 
pulls out a great fish at the first cast. 

But hitherto his passion had been indulged 
under difficulties — with improvised apparatus of 
cut poles, and flabby pieces of string and bent 
pins, which always failed to hold the biggest fish ; 
or perhaps with borrowed tackle, dangling a fat 
worm in vain before the noses of the staring, su- 
percilious sunfish that poised themselves in the 
clear water around the Lake House dock at Lake 
George ; or, at best, on picnic parties across the 
lake, marred by the humiliating presence of nurses, 
and disturbed by the obstinate refusal of old 
Horace, the boatman, to believe that the boy could 
bait his own hook, but sometimes crowned with 
the delight of bringing home a whole basketful 
of yellow perch and goggle-eyes. Of nobler sport 
with game fish, like the vaulting salmon and the 
merry, pugnacious trout, as yet the boy had only 
dreamed. But he had heard that there were such 
fish in the streams that flowed down from the 
mountains around Lake George, and he was at 
the happy age when he could believe anything — 
if it was sufficiently interesting. 

There was one little river, and only one, within 
his knowledge and the reach of his short legs. 
It was a tiny, lively rivulet that came out of the 
woods about half a mile away from the hotel, 
and ran down eater-cornered through a sloping 
meadow, crossing the road under a flat bridge of 



38 LITTLE RIVERS 

boards, just beyond the root-beer shop at the lower 
end of the village. It seemed large enough to the 
boy, and he had long had his eye upon it as a 
fitting theatre for the beginning of a real angler's 
life. Those rapids, those falls, those deep, whirl- 
ing pools with beautiful foam on them like soft, 
white custard, were they not such places as the 
trout loved to hide in ? 

You can see the long hotel piazza, with the 
gossipy groups of wooden chairs standing vacant 
in the early afternoon ; for the grown-up people 
are dallying with the ultimate nuts and raisins of 
their midday dinner. A villainous clatter of in- 
numerable little vegetable-dishes comes from the 
open windows of the pantry as the boy steals past 
the kitchen end of the house, with Horace's light- 
est bamboo pole over his shoulder, and a little 
brother in skirts and short white stockings tag- 
ging along behind him. 

When they come to the five-rail fence where the 
brook runs out of the field, the question is, Over 
or under? The lowlier method seems safer for 
the little brother, as well as less conspicuous for 
persons who desire to avoid publicity until their 
enterprise has achieved success. So they crawl 
beneath abend in the lowest rail,— only tearing 
one tiny three-cornered hole in a jacket, and mak- 
ing some juicy green stains on the white stock- 
ings, — and emerge with suppressed excitement in 
the field of the cloth of buttercups and daisies. 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 39 

What an afternoon— how endless and yet how 
swift! What perilous efforts to leap across the 
foaming stream at its narrowest points ; what es- 
capes from quagmires and possible quicksands ; 
what stealthy creeping through the grass to the 
edge of a likely pool, and cautious dropping of the 
line into an unseen depth, and patient waiting 
for a bite, until the restless little brother, prowl- 
ing about below, discovers that the hook is not in 
the water at all, but lying on top of a dry stone, 
— thereby proving that patience is not the only 
virtue— or, at least, that it does a better business 
when it has a small vice of impatience in partner- 
ship with it! 

How tired the adventurers grow as the day 
wears away ; and as yet they have taken nothing ! 
But their strength and courage return as if by 
magic when there comes a surprising twitch at 
the line in a shallow, unpromising rapid, and with 
a jerk of the pole a small, wiggling fish is whirled 
through the air and landed thirty feet back in the 
meadow. 

" For pity's sake, don't lose him! There he is 
among the roots of the blue flag." 

" I've got him! How cold he is— how slippery 
—how pretty! Just like a piece of rainbow! " 

" Do you see the red spots? Did you notice 
how gamy he was, little brother, how he played? 
It is a trout, for sure ; a real trout, almost as long 
as your hand." 



4 o LITTLE RIVERS 

So the two lads tramp along up the stream, 
chattering as if there were no rubric of silence in 
the angler's code. Presently another simple- 
minded troutling falls a victim to their unpremed- 
itated art ; and they begin already, being human, 
to wish for something larger. In the very last 
pool that they dare attempt — a dark hole under a 
steep bank, where the brook issues from the woods 
— the boy drags out the hoped-for prize, a splen- 
did trout, longer than anew lead-pencil. But he 
feels sure that there must be another, even larger, 
in the same place. He swings his line out care- 
fully over the water, and just as he is about to 
drop it in, the little brother, perched on the slop- 
ing brink, slips on the smooth pine-needles, and 
goes sliddering down into the pool up to his waist. 
How he weeps with dismay, and how funnily his 
dress sticks to him as he crawls out! But his 
grief is soon assuaged by the privilege of carrying 
the trout strung on an alder twig; and it is a 
happy, muddy, proud pair of urchins that climb 
over the fence out of the field of triumph at the 
close of the day. 

What does the father say as he meets them in 
the road? Is he frowning or smiling under that 
big brown beard? You cannot be quite sure. 
But one thing is clear : he is as much elated over 
the capture of the real trout as any one. He is 
ready to deal mildly with a little irregularity for 
the sake of encouraging pluck and perseverance. 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 41 

Before the three comrades have reached the hotel, 
the boy has promised faithfully never to take his 
little brother off again without asking leave ; and 
the father has promised that the boy shall have a 
real jointed fishing-rod of his own, so that he 
will not need to borrow old Horace's pole any 
more. 

At breakfast the next morning the family are to 
have a private dish; not an every-day affair of 
vulgar, bony fish that nurses can catch, but trout 
— three of them! But the boy looks up from the 

table and sees the adored of his soul, Annie V , 

sitting at the other end of the room, and faring 
on the common food of mortals. Shall she eat 
the ordinary breakfast while he feasts on dainties ? 
Do not other sportsmen send their spoils to the 
ladies whom they admire? The waiter must bring 
a hot plate, and take this largest trout to Miss 
V (Miss Annie, not her sister — make no mis- 
take about it). 

The face of Augustus is as solemn as an ebony 
idol while he plays his part of Cupid's messenger. 
The fair Annie affects surprise ; she accepts the 
offering rather indifferently ; her curls drop down 
over her cheeks to cover some small confusion. 
But for an instant the corner of her eye catches 
the boy's sidelong glance, and she nods percept- 
ibly, whereupon his mother very inconsiderately 
calls attention to the fact that yesterday's escapade 
has sunburned his face dreadfully. 



42 LITTLE RIVERS 

Beautiful Annie V , who, among all the 

unripened nymphs that played at hide-and-seek 
among the maples on the hotel lawn, or waded 
with white feet along the yellow beach beyond the 
point of pines, flying with merry shrieks into the 
woods when a boat-load of boys appeared sud- 
denly around the corner, or danced the lancers in 
the big, bare parlours before the grown-up ball 
began — who in all that joyous, innocent bevy 
could be compared with you for charm or daring? 
How your dark eyes sparkled, and how the long 
brown ringlets tossed around your small head, 
when you stood up that evening, slim and straight, 
and taller by half a head than your companions, 
in the lamp-lit room where the children were 
playing forfeits, and said, " There is not one boy 
here that dares to kiss me! " Then you ran out 
on the dark porch, where the honeysuckle vines 
grew up the tall, inane Corinthian pillars. 

Did you blame the boy for following? And 
were you very angry indeed about what hap- 
pened, —until you broke out laughing at his cravat, 
which had slipped around behind his ear? That 
was the first time he ever noticed how much 
sweeter the honeysuckle smells at night than in 
the day. It was his entrance examination in the 
school of nature — human and otherwise. He felt 
that there was a whole continent of newly discov- 
ered poetry within him, and worshiped his Colum- 
bus disguised in curls. Your boy is your true 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 43 

idealist, after all, although (or perhaps because) 
he is still uncivilized. 



II 



The arrival of the rod, in four joints, with an 
extra tip, a brass reel, and the other luxuries for 
which a true angler would willingly exchange the 
necessaries of life, marked a new epoch in the 
boy's career. At the uplifting of that wand, as if 
it had been in the hand of another Moses, the 
waters of infancy rolled back, and the way was 
opened into the promised land, whither the tyrant 
nurses, with all their proud array of baby-chariots, 
could not follow. The way was open, but not 
by any means dry. One of the first events in the 
dispensation of the rod was the purchase of a pair 
of high rubber boots. Inserted in this armour of 
modern infantry, and transfigured with delight, 
the boy clumped through all the little rivers within 
a circuit of ten miles from Caldwell, and began to 
learn by parental example the yet unmastered art 
of complete angling. 

But because some of the streams were deep 
and strong, and his legs were short and slender, 
and his ambition was even taller than his boots, 
the father would sometimes take him up picka- 
back, and wade along carefully through the peri- 
lous places— which are often, in this world, the 
very places one longs to fish in. So, in your re- 



44 LITTLE RIVERS 

membrance, you can see the little rubber boots 
sticking out under the father's arms, and the rod 
projecting over his head, and the bait dangling 
down unsteadily into the deep holes, and the de- 
lighted boy hooking and playing and basketing 
his trout high in the air. How many of our best 
catches in life are made from some one else's 
shoulders ! 

From this summer the whole earth became to 
the boy, as Tennyson describes the lotus country, 
" a land of streams. " In school-days and in town 
he acknowledged the sway of those mysterious 
and irresistible forces which produce tops at one 
season, and marbles at another, and kites at an- 
other, and bind all boyish hearts to play mumble - 
the-peg at the due time more certainly than the 
stars are bound to their orbits. But when vaca- 
tion came, with its annual exodus from the city, 
there was only one sign in the zodiac, and that 
was Pisces. 

No country seemed to him tolerable without 
trout, and no landscape beautiful unless enlivened 
by a young river. Among what delectable moun- 
tains did those watery guides lead his vagrant 
steps, and with what curious, mixed, and some- 
times profitable company did they make him 
familiar! 

There was one exquisite stream among the Al- 
leghanies, called Lycoming Creek, beside which 
the family spent a summer in a decadent inn, kept 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 45 

by a tremulous landlord who was always sitting 
on the steps of the porch, and whose most mem- 
orable remark was that he had " a misery in his 
stomach. " This form of speech amused the boy 
but he did not in the least comprehend it. It 
was the description of an unimaginable experience 
in a region which was as yet known to him only 
as the seat of pleasure. He did not understand 
how any one could be miserable when he could 
catch trout from his own dooryard. 

The big creek, with its sharp turns from side 
to side of the valley, its hemlock-shaded falls in 
the gorge, and its long, still reaches in the " sugar- 
bottom," where the maple-trees grew as if in an 
orchard, and the superfluity of grasshoppers made 
the trout fat and dainty, was too wide to fit the 
boy. But Nature keeps all sizes in her stock, and 
a smaller stream, called Rocky Run, came tum- 
bling down opposite the inn, as if made to order 
for juvenile use. 

How well you can follow it, through the old 
pasture overgrown with alders, and up past the 
broken-down mill-dam and the crumbling sluice, 
into the mountain -cleft from which it leaps laugh- 
ing! The water, except just after a rain-storm, is 
as transparent as glass — old-fashioned window- 
glass, I mean, in small panes, with just a tinge of 
green in it, like the air in a grove of young birches. 
Twelve feet down in the narrow chasm below the 
falls, where the water is full of tiny bubbles, like 



46 LITTLE RIVERS 

Apollinaris, you can see the trout poised, with 
their heads up-stream, motionless, but quivering 
a little, as if they were strung on wires. 

The bed of the stream has been scooped out of 
the solid rock. Here and there banks of sand 
have been deposited, and accumulations of loose 
stone disguise the real nature of the channel. 
Great boulders have been rolled down the alley- 
way and left where they chanced to stick; the 
stream must get around them or under them as 
best it can. But there are other places where 
everything has been swept clean ; nothing remains 
but the primitive strata, and the flowing water 
merrily tickles the bare ribs of mother earth. 
Whirling stones, in the spring floods, have cut 
well-holes in the rock, as round and even as if 
they had been made with a drill, and sometimes 
you can see the very stone that sunk the well lying 
at the bottom. There are long, straight, sloping 
troughs through which the water runs like a mill- 
race. There are huge basins into which the water 
rumbles over a ledge, as if some one were pouring 
it very steadily out of a pitcher, and from which 
it glides away without a ripple, flowing over a 
smooth pavement of rock which shelves down from 
the shallow foot to the deep head of the pool. 

The boy wonders how far he dare wade out 
along that slippery floor. The water is within 
an inch of his boot-tops now. But the slope 
seems very even, and just beyond his reach a good 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 47 

fish is rising. Only one step more, and then, 
like the wicked man in the psalm, his feet begin 
to slide. Slowly, and standing bolt upright, with 
the rod held high above his head, as if it must on 
no account get wet, he glides forward up to his 
neck in the ice-cold bath, gasping with amaze- 
ment. There have been other and more serious 
situations in life into which, unless I am mistaken, 
you have made an equally unwilling and embar- 
rassed entrance, and in which you have been sur- 
prised to find yourself not only up to your neck, 
but over ; and you are a lucky man if you have 
had the presence of mind to stand still for a mo- 
ment, before wading out, and make sure at least of 
the fish that tempted you into your predicament. 

But Rocky Run, they say, exists no longer. 
It has been blasted by miners out of all resem 
blance to itself, and bewitched into a dingy water- 
power to turn wheels for the ugly giant, Trade. 
It is only in the valley of remembrance that its 
current still flows like liquid air, and only in that 
country that you can still see the famous men who 
came and went along the banks of the Lycoming 
when the boy was there. 

There was Collins, who was a wondrous adept 
at " daping, dapping, or dibbling" with a grass- 
hopper, and who once brought in a string of trout 
which he laid out head to tail on the grass before 
the house in a line of beauty forty-seven feet long. 
A mighty bass voice had this Collins, also, and 



48 LITTLE RIVERS 

could sing " Larboard watch, ahoy ! " " Down 
in a coal-mine," and other profound ditties in a 
way to make all the glasses on the table jingle ; 
but withal, as you now suspect, rather a fishy 
character, and undeserving of the unqualified re- 
spect which the boy had for him. And there was 
Dr. Romsen, lean, satirical, kindly, a skilful 
though reluctant physician, who regarded it as a 
personal injury if any one in the party fell sick in 
summer-time; and a passionately unsuccessful 
hunter, who would sit all night in the crotch of a 
tree beside an alleged deer-lick, and come home 
perfectly satisfied if he had heard a hedgehog 
grunt. It was he who called attention to the dis- 
crepancy between the boy's appetite and his size 
by saying loudly at a picnic, " I wouldn't grudge 
you what you eat, my boy, if I could only see 
that it did you any good," — which remark was not 
forgiven until the doctor redeemed his reputation 
by pronouncing a serious medical opinion, before 
a council of mothers, to the effect that it did not 
really hurt a boy to get his feet wet. That was 
worthy of Galen in his most inspired moment. 
And there were the hearty, genial Paul Merit, 
whose mere company was an education in good 
manners, and who could eat eight hard-boiled eggs 
for supper without ruffling his equanimity; and 
the tall, thin, grinning major, whom an angry 
Irishwoman once described as "like a comb, all 
back and teeth " ; and many more comrades of the 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 49 

boy's father, all of whom he admired (and fol- 
lowed when they would let him,) but none so 
much as the father himself, because he was the 
wisest, kindest, and merriest of all that merry 
crew, now dispersed to the uttermost parts of the 
earth and beyond. 

Other streams played a part in the education of 
that happy boy : the Kaaterskill, where there had 
been nothing but the ghosts of trout for the last 
thirty years, but where the absence of fish was 
almost forgotten in the joy of a first introduction 
to Dickens, one very showery day, when dear old 
Ned Mason built a smoky fire in a cave below 
Haines's Falls, and, pulling The Old Curiosity 
Shop out of his pocket, read aloud about Little 
Nell until the tears ran down the cheeks of reader 
and listener — the smoke was so thick, you know : 
and the Neversink, which flows through John 
Burroughs' country, and past one house in par- 
ticular, perched on a high bluff, where a very 
dreadful old woman comes out and throws stones 
at " city fellers fishin' through her land " (as if 
any one wanted to touch her land! It was the 
water that ran over it, you see, that carried the 
fish with it, and they were not hers at all) : and 
the stream at Healing Springs, in the Virginia 
mountains, where the medicinal waters flow down 
into a lovely wild brook without injuring the 
health of the trout in the least, and where the 
only drawback to the angler's happiness is the 



50 LITTLE RIVERS 

abundance of rattlesnakes— but a boy does not 
mind such things as that ; he feels as if he were 
immortal. Over all these streams memory skips 
lightly, and strikes a trail through the woods to 
the Adirondacks, where the boy made his first ac- 
quaintance with navigable rivers, —that is to say, 
rivers which are traversed by canoes and hunting- 
skiffs, but not yet defiled by steamboats, —and 
slept, or rather lay awake, for the first time on a 
bed of balsam-boughs in a tent. 



Ill 



The promotion from all-day picnics to a two 
weeks' camping-trip is like going from school to 
college. By this time a natural process of evolu- 
tion has raised the first stiff rod to something 
lighter and more flexible, —a fly-rod, so to speak, 
but not a bigoted one,— just a serviceable, un- 
prejudiced article, not above using any kind of 
bait that may be necessary to catch the fish. The 
father has received the new title of " governor," 
indicating not less but more authority, and has 
called in new instructors to carry on the boy's 
education: real Adirondack guides — old Sam 
Dunning and one-eyed Enos, the last and laziest 
of the Saranac Indians. Better men will be dis- 
covered for later trips, but none more amusing, 
and none whose woodcraft seems more wonderful 
than that of this queerly matched team, as they 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 51 

make the first camp in a pelting rain-storm on the 
shore of Big Clear Pond. The pitching of the 
tents is a lesson in architecture, the building of 
the camp-fire a victory over damp nature, and the 
supper of potatoes and bacon and fried trout a 
veritable triumph of culinary art. 

At midnight the rain is pattering persistently 
on the canvas ; the front flaps are closed and tied 
together ; the lingering fire shines through them, 
and sends vague shadows wavering up and down : 
the governor is rolled up in his blankets, sound 
asleep. It is a very long night for the boy. 

What is that rustling noise outside the tent? 
Probably some small creature, a squirrel or a 
rabbit. Rabbit stew would be good for breakfast. 
But it sounds louder now, almost loud enough to 
be a fox, — there are no wolves left in the Adiron- 
dacks, or at least only a very few. That is cer- 
tainly quite a heavy footstep prowling around the 
provision-box. Could it be a panther, — they step 
very softly for their size, — or a bear perhaps? 
Sam Dunning told about catching one in a trap 
just below here. (Ah! my boy, you will soon 
learn that there is no spot in all the forests created 
by a bountiful Providence so poor as to be with- 
out its bear-story.) Where was the rifle put? 
There it is, at the foot of the tent-pole. Wonder 
if it is loaded? 

" Waugh-ho ! Waugh-ho-o-0-0 J '" 

The boy springs from his blankets like a cat, 



S 2 LITTLE RIVERS 

and peeps out between the tent-flaps. There sits 
Enos, in the shelter of a leaning tree by the fire, 
with his head thrown back and a bottle poised at 
his mouth. His lonely eye is cocked up at a 
great horned owl on the branch above him. Again 
the sudden voice breaks out : 

" Whoo! whoof whoo cooks for you all?" 

Enos puts the bottle down, with a grunt, and 
creeps off to his tent. 

" De debbil in dat owl," he mutters. " How 
he know I cook for dis camp? How he know 
'bout dat bottle? Ugh!" 

There are hundreds of pictures that flash into 
light as the boy goes on his course, year after 
year, through the woods. There is the luxurious 
camp on Tupper's Lake, with its log-cabins in the 
spruce-grove, and its regiment of hungry men 
who ate almost a deer a day ; and there is the little 
bark shelter on the side of Mount Marcy, where 
the governor and the boy, with baskets full of 
trout from the Opalescent River, are spending the 
night, with nothing but a fire to keep them warm. 
There is the North Bay at Moosehead, with Joe 
La Croix (one more Frenchman who thinks he 
looks like Napoleon) posing on the rocks beside 
his canoe, and only reconciled by his vanity to 
the wasteful pastime of taking photographs while 
the big fish are rising gloriously out at the end of 
the point. There is the small spring-hole beside 
the Saranac River, where Pliny Robbins and the 



A LEAF OF SPEARMINT 53 

boy caught twenty-three noble trout, weighing 
from one to three pounds apiece, in the middle of 
a hot August afternoon, and hid themselves in 
the bushes whenever they heard a party coming 
down the river, because they did not care to at- 
tract company ; and there are the Middle Falls, 
where the governor stood on a long spruce log, 
taking two-pound fish with the fly, and stepping 
out at every cast a little nearer to the end of the 
log, until it slowly tipped with him, and he settled 
down into the river. 

Among such scenes as these the boy pursued 
his education, learning many things that are not 
taught in colleges ; learning to take the weather as 
it comes, wet or dry, and fortune as it falls, good 
or bad ; learning that a meal which is scanty fare 
for one becomes a banquet for two — provided the 
other is the right person ; learning that there is 
some skill in everything, even in digging bait, 
and that what is called luck consists chiefly in 
having your tackle in good order ; learning that a 
man can be just as happy in a log shanty as in a 
brown-stone mansion, and that the very best pleas- 
ures are those that do not leave a bad taste in the 
mouth. And in all this the governor was his best 
teacher and his closest comrade. 

Dear governor, you have gone out of the wil- 
derness now, and your steps will be no more 
beside these remembered little rivers — no more, 
forever and forever. You will not come in sight 



54 LITTLE RIVERS 

around any bend of this clear Swiftwater stream 
where you made your last cast ; your cheery voice 
will never again ring out through the deepening 
twilight where you are lingering for your disciple 
to catch up with you ; he will never again hear 
you call: "Hallo, my boy! What luck? Time 
to go home! " But there is a river in the country 
where you have gone, is there not? — a river with 
trees growing all along it — evergreen-trees; and 
somewhere by those shady banks, within sound of 
clear running waters, I think you will be dream- 
ing and waiting for your boy, if he follows the 
trail that you have shown him even to the end. 



AMPERSAND 



««P?? 



' It is not the walking merely, it is keeping yourself in tune 
for a walk, in the spiritual and bodily condition in which 
you can find entertainment and exhilaration in so simple 
and natural a pastime. You are eligible to any good for- 
tune when you are in a condition to enjoy a walk. When 
the air and water tastes sweet to you, how much else will 
taste sweet! When the exercise of your limbs affords you 
pleasure, and the play of your senses ztpon the various ob- 
jects and shows of Nature quickens and stimulates your 
spirit, your relation to the world and to yourself is what 
it should be, — simple, and direct, and wholesome." — John 
Burroughs: Pepacton. 




AMPERSAND 




HE right to the name of Ampersand, 
like the territory of Gaul in those 
CommentaTies which Julius Caesar 
wrote for the punishment of school- 
boys, is divided into three parts. It belongs to 
a mountain, and a lake, and a little river. 

The mountain stands in the heart of the Adiron- 
dack country, just near enough to the thorough- 
fare of travel for thousands of people to see it 
every year, and just far enough from the beaten 
track to be unvisited except by a very few of the 
wise ones, who love to turn aside. Behind the 
mountain is the lake, which no lazy man has ever 
seen. Out of the lake flows the stream, winding 
down a long, untrodden forest valley, to join the 
Stony Creek waters and empty into the Raquette 
River. 

Which of the three Ampersands has the first 
claim to the name, I cannot tell. Philosophically 



58 LITTLE RIVERS 

speaking, the mountain ought to be regarded as 
the head of the family, because it was undoubt- 
edly there before the others. And the lake was 
probably the next on the ground, because the 
stream is its child. But man is not strictly just 
in his nomenclature; and I conjecture that the 
little river, the last-born of the three, was the 
first to be christened Ampersand, and then gave 
its name to its parent and grand-parent. It is 
such a crooked stream, so bent and curved and 
twisted upon itself, so fond of turning around un- 
expected corners and sweeping away in great 
circles from its direct course, that its first explorers 
christened it after the eccentric supernumerary 
of the alphabet which appears in the old spelling- 
books as & — and, per se, and. 

But in spite of this apparent subordination to 
the stream in the matter of a name, the mountain 
clearly asserts its natural authority. It stands up 
boldly; and not only its own lake, but at least 
three others, the Lower Saranac, Round Lake, 
and Lonesome Pond, lie at its foot and acknow- 
ledge its lordship. When the cloud is on its brow, 
they are dark. When the sunlight crowns it, they 
smile. Wherever you may go over the waters of 
these lakes you shall see Mount Ampersand look- 
ing down at you, and saying quietly, " This is 
my domain." 

I never look at a mountain which asserts itself 
in this fashion without desiring to stand on the 



AMPERSAND 59 

top of it. If one can reach the summit, one be- 
comes a sharer in the dominion. The difficulties 
in the way only add to the zest of the victory. 
Every mountain is, rightly considered, an invi- 
tation to climb. While I was resting for a month 
one summer at Bartlett's, Ampersand challenged 
me daily. 

Did you know Bartlett's in its palmy time? 
It was the homeliest, quaintest, coziest place 
in the Adirondacks. Away back in the ante- 
bellum days Virgil Bartlett had come into the 
woods, and built his house on the bank of the 
Saranac River, between the Upper Saranac and 
Round Lake. It was then the only dwelling 
within a circle of many miles . The deer and bear 
were in the majority. At night one could some- 
times hear the scream of the panther or the howl- 
ing of wolves. But soon the wilderness began to 
wear the traces of a conventional smile. The 
desert blossomed a little— if not as the rose, at 
least as the gillyflower. Fields were cleared, 
gardens planted; half a dozen log-cabins were 
scattered along the river ; and the old house, hav- 
ing grown slowly and somewhat irregularly for 
twenty years, came out, just before the time of 
which I write, in a modest coat of paint and a 
broad-brimmed piazza. But Virgil himself, the 
creator of the oasis,— well known of hunters and 
fishermen, dreaded of lazy guides and quarrelsome 
lumbermen,— "Virge," the irascible, kind- 



60 LITTLE RIVERS 

hearted, indefatigable, was there no longer. He 
had made his last clearing and fought his last fight ; 
done his last favour to a friend, and thrown his 
last adversary out of the tavern door. His last 
log had gone down the river. His camp-fire had 
burned out. Peace to his ashes. His wife, who 
had often played the part of Abigail toward trav- 
ellers who had unconsciously incurred the old 
man's mistrust, now reigned in his stead, and there 
was great abundance of maple-syrup on every 
man's flapjack. 

The charm of Bartlett's for the angler was the 
stretch of rapid water in front of the house. The 
Saranac River, breaking from its first resting-place 
in the Upper Lake, plunged down through a great 
bed of rocks, making a chain of short falls and 
pools and rapids, about half a mile in length. 
Here, in the spring and early summer, the 
speckled trout— brightest and daintiest of all fish 
that swim — used to be found in great numbers. 
As the season advanced, they moved away into 
the deep water of the lakes. But there were 
always a few stragglers left, and I have taken 
them in the rapids at the very end of August. 
What could be more delightful than to spend an 
hour or two, in the early morning or evening of 
a hot day, in wading this rushing stream, and 
casting the fly on its clear waters? The wind 
blows softly down the narrow valley, and the 
trees nod from the rocks above you. The noise 



AMPERSAND 61 

of the falls makes constant music in your ears. 
The river hurries past you, and yet it is never 
gone. 

The same foam-flakes seem to be always glid- 
ing downward, the same spray dashing over the 
stones, the same eddy coiling at the edge of the 
pool. Send your fly in under those cedar- 
branches, where the water swirls around by that 
old log. Now draw it up toward the foam. 
There is a sudden gleam of dull gold in the white 
water. You strike too soon. Your line comes 
back to you. In a current like this, a fish will 
almost always hook himself. Try it again. This 
time he takes the fly fairly, and you have him. 
It is a good fish, and he makes the slender rod 
bend to the strain. He sulks for a moment as if 
uncertain what to do, and then with a rush darts 
into the swiftest part of the current. You can 
never stop him there. Let him go. Keep just 
enough pressure on him to hold the hook firm, 
and follow his troutship down the stream as if he 
were a salmon. He slides over a little fall, gleam- 
ing through the foam, and swings around in the 
next pool. Here you can manage him more 
easily ; and after a few minutes' brilliant play, a 
few mad dashes for the current, he comes to the 
net, and your skilful guide lands him with a 
quick, steady sweep of the arm. The scales 
credit him with an even pound, and a better fish 
than this you will hardly take here in midsummer. 



62 LITTLE RIVERS 

" On my word, master," says the appreciative 
Venator, in Walton's Angler, "this is a gal- 
lant trout ; what shall we do with him? " And 
honest Piscator replies, "Marry! e'en eat him to 
supper. We'll go to my hostess from whence 
we came ; she told me, as I was going out of door, 
that my brother Peter, (and who is this but 
Romeyn of Keeseville?), a good angler and a 
cheerful companion, had sent word he would 
lodge there to-night, and bring a friend with him. 
My hostess has two beds, and I know you and I 
have the best. We'll rejoice with my brother 
Peter and his friend, tell tales, or sing ballads, or 
make a catch, or find some harmless sport to 
content us, and pass away a little time without 
offence to God or man." 

Mount Ampersand's invitation remained unan- 
swered while I passed many days in such inno- 
cent and healthful pleasures as these, until the 
right day came for the ascent. Cool, clean, and 
bright, the crystal morning promised a glorious 
noon, and the mountain almost seemed to beckon 
us to come up higher. The photographic camera 
and a trustworthy lunch were stowed away in the 
pack-basket. The backboard was adjusted at a 
comfortable angle in the stern seat of our little 
boat. The guide held the tottery craft steady 
while I stepped into my place ; then he pushed 
out into the stream, and we went swiftly down 
toward Round Lake. 



AMPERSAND 63 

A Saranac boat is one of the finest things that 
the skill of man has ever produced under the in- 
spiration of the wilderness. It is a frail shell, so 
light that a guide can carry it on his shoulders 
with ease, but so dexterously fashioned that it 
rides the heaviest waves like a duck, and slips 
through the water as if by magic. You can travel 
in it along the shallowest rivers and across the 
broadest lakes, and make forty or fifty miles a 
day, if you have a good guide. 

Everything depends, in the Adirondacks, as in 
so many other regions of life, upon your guide. 
If he is selfish, or surly, or stupid, you will have 
a bad time. But if he is an Adirondacker of the 
best old-fashioned type,— now unhappily growing 
more rare from year to year, — you will find him 
an inimitable companion, honest, faithful, skilful, 
and cheerful. He is as independent as a prince, 
and the gilded youths and finicking fine ladies 
who attempt to patronize him are apt to make 
but a sorry show before his solid and undisguised 
contempt. But deal with him man to man, and 
he will give you a friendly, loyal service which 
money cannot buy, and teach you secrets of 
woodcraft and lessons in plain, self-reliant man- 
hood more valuable than all the learning of the 
schools. Such a guide was mine, rejoicing in 
the scriptural name of Hosea, but commonly 
called, in brevity and friendliness, "Hose." 

As we entered Round Lake on this fair morn- 



64 LITTLE RIVERS 

ing, its surface was as smooth and shining as a 

mirror. It was too early yet for the tide of travel 

which sends a score of boats up and down this 

thoroughfare every day; and from shore to shore 

the water was unruffled, except by a flock of 

sheldrakes which had been feeding near Plymouth 

Rock, and now went skittering off into Weller 

Bay with a motion between flying and swimming, 

leaving a long wake of foam behind them. 

At such a time as this you can see the real 

colour of these Adirondack lakes. It is not blue, 

as romantic writers so often describe it, nor 

green, like some of those wonderful Swiss lakes, 

although of course it reflects the colour of the 

trees along the shore, and when the wind stirs 

it, it gives back the hue of the sky, blue when it 

is clear, gray when the clouds are gathering, and 

sometimes as black as ink under the shadow of 

storm. But when it is still, the water itself is 

like that river which one of the poets has described 

as 

" Flowing with a smooth brown current." 

And in this sheet of burnished bronze the moun- 
tains and islands were reflected perfectly, and the 
sun shone back from it, not in broken gleams or 
a wide lane of light, but like a single ball of fire, 
moving before us as we moved. 

But stop! What is that dark speck on the 
water, away down toward Turtle Point? It has 
just the shape and size of a deer's head. It 



AMPERSAND 65 

seems to move steadily out into the lake. There 
is a little ripple, like a wake, behind it. Hose 
turns to look at it, and then sends the boat dart- 
ing in that direction with long, swift strokes. It 
is a moment of pleasant excitement, and we begin 
to conjecture whether the deer is a buck or a doe, 
and whose hounds have driven it in. But when 
Hose turns to look again, he slackens his stroke, 
and says: "I guess we needn't to hurry; he 
won't get away. It's astonishin' what a lot of 
fun a man can get in the course of a natural life 
a-chasin' chumps of wood." 

We landed on a sand-beach at the mouth of a 
little stream, where a blazed tree marked the 
beginning of the Ampersand trail. This line 
through the forest was made years ago by that 
ardent sportsman and lover of the Adirondacks, 
Dr. W. W. Ely, of Rochester. Since that time 
it has been shortened and improved a little by 
other travellers, and also not a little blocked and 
confused by the lumbermen and the course of 
Nature. For when the lumbermen go into the 
woods, they cut roads in every direction, leading 
nowhither, and the unwary wanderer is thereby 
led aside from the right way, and entangled in the 
undergrowth. And as for Nature, she is entirely 
opposed to continuance of paths through her for- 
est. She covers them with fallen leaves, and 
hides them with thick bushes. She drops great 
trees across them, and blots them out with wind- 



66 LITTLE RIVERS 

falls. But the blazed line— a succession of broad 
axe-marks on the trunks of the trees, just high 
enough to catch the eye on a level— cannot be so 
easily obliterated, and this, after all, is the safest 
guide through the woods. 

Our trail led us at first through a natural 
meadow, overgrown with waist-high grass, and 
very spongy to the tread. Now this meadow was 
hornet-haunted, and therefore no place for idle 
dalliance or unwary digression, for the sting of 
the hornet is one of the saddest and most humilat- 
ing surprises of this mortal life. 

Then through a tangle of old wood-roads my 
guide led me safely, and we struck up on the long 
ridges which slope gently from the lake to the 
base of the mountain. Here walking was com- 
paratively easy, for in the hard- wood timber there 
is little underbrush. The massive trunks seemed 
like pillars set to uphold the level roof of green. 
Great yellow birches, shaggy with age, stretched 
their knotted arms high above us ; sugar-maples 
stood up straight and proud under their leafy 
crowns; and smooth beeches— the most polished 
and park-like of all the forest-trees — offered op- 
portunities for the carving of lovers' names in a 
place where few lovers ever come. 

The woods were quiet. It seemed as if all liv- 
ing creatures had deserted them. Indeed, if you 
have spent much time in our Northern forests, 
you must have often wondered at the sparseness 



AMPERSAND 67 

of life, and felt a sense of pity for the apparent 
loneliness of the squirrel that chatters at you as 
you pass, or the little bird that hops noiselessly 
about in the thickets. The midsummer noontide 
is an especially silent time. The deer are asleep 
in some wild meadow. The partridge has gath- 
ered her brood for their midday nap. The squir- 
rels are perhaps counting over their store of nuts 
in a hollow tree, and the hermit-thrush spares his 
voice until evening. The woods are close — not 
cool and fragrant as the foolish romances describe 
them, but warm and still ; for the breeze which 
sweeps across the hilltop and ruffles the lake does 
not penetrate into these shady recesses, and there- 
fore all the inhabitants take the noontide as their 
hour of rest. Only the pileated woodpecker — the 
big black fellow with the bloody crest— is inde- 
fatigable, and somewhere unseen is " tapping the 
hollow beech-tree," while a wakeful little bird — 
I guess it is the black-throated green warbler, 
prolongs his dreamy, listless ditty—" ' Te-de-terit- 
sca — He-de-us-wait. " 

After about an hour of easy walking, our trail 
began to ascend more sharply. We passed over 
the shoulder of a ridge and around the edge of a 
fire-slash, and then we had the mountain fairly 
before us. Not that we could see anything of it, 
for the woods still shut us in, but the path became 
very steep, and we knew that it was a straight 
climb ; not up and down and round about did this 



68 LITTLE RIVERS 

most uncompromising trail proceed, but right up, 
in a direct line for the summit. 

Now this side of Ampersand is steeper than any 
Gothic roof I have ever seen, and withal very 
much encumbered with rocks and ledges and 
fallen trees. There were places where we had to 
haul ourselves up by roots and branches, and 
places where we had to go down on our hands 
and knees to crawl under logs. It was breathless 
work, but not at all dangerous or difficult. Every 
step forward was also a step upward ; and as we 
stopped to rest for a moment, we could see already 
glimpses of the lake below us. But at these I did 
not much care to look, for I think it is a pity to 
spoil the surprise of a grand view by taking little 
snatches of it beforehand. It is better to keep 
one's face set to the mountain, and then, coming 
out from the dark forest upon the very summit, 
feel the splendour of the outlook flash upon one 
like a revelation. 

The character of the woods through which we 
were now passing was entirely different from 
those of the lower levels. On these steep places 
the birch and maple will not grow, or at least 
they occur but sparsely. The higher slopes and 
sharp ridges of the mountains are always covered 
with black timber. Spruce and hemlock and bal- 
sam strike their roots among the rocks, and find 
a hidden nourishment. They stand close to- 
gether ; thickets of small trees spring up among 



AMPERSAND 69 

the large ones ; from year to year the great trunks 
are falling one across another, and the under- 
growth is thickening around them, until a spruce 
forest seems to be almost impassable. The con- 
stant rain of needles and the crumbling of the 
fallen trees form a rich, brown mould, into which 
the foot sinks noiselessly. Wonderful beds of 
moss, many feet in thickness, and softer than 
feathers, cover the rocks and roots. There are 
shadows never broken by the sun, and dark, cool 
springs of icy water hidden away in the crevices. 
You feel a sense of antiquity here which you can 
never feel among the maples and beeches. 
Longfellow was right when he filled his forest 
primeval with " murmuring pines and hemlocks." 
The higher one climbs, the darker and gloomier 
and more rugged the vegetation becomes. The 
pine-trees soon cease to follow you ; the hemlocks 
disappear, and the balsams can go no farther. 
Only the hardy spruce keeps on bravely, rough 
and stunted, with branches matted together and 
pressed down flat by the weight of the winter's 
snow, until finally, somewhere about the level of 
four thousand feet above the sea, even this bold 
climber gives out, and the weather-beaten rocks 
of the summit are clad only with mosses and Al- 
pine plants. 

Thus it is with mountains, as perhaps with 
men, a mark of superior dignity to be naturally 
bald. 



7 o LITTLE RIVERS 

Ampersand, falling short by a thousand feet of 
the needful height, cannot claim this distinction. 
But what Nature has denied, human labour has 
supplied. Under the direction of the Adirondack 
Survey, some years ago, several acres of trees 
were cut from the summit ; and when we emerged, 
after the last sharp scramble, upon the very crest 
of the mountain, we were not shut in by a dense 
thicket, but stood upon a bare ridge of granite in 
the centre of a ragged clearing. 

I shut my eyes for a moment, drew a few long 
breaths of the glorious breeze, and then looked 
out upon a wonder and a delight beyond descrip- 
tion. 

A soft, dazzling splendour filled the air. Snowy 
banks and drifts of cloud were floating slowly 
over a wide and wondrous land. Vast sweeps of 
forest, shining waters, mountains near and far, the 
deepest green and the palest blue, changing col- 
ours and glancing lights, and all so silent, so 
strange, so far away, that it seemed like the land- 
scape of a dream. One almost feared to speak, 
lest it should vanish. 

Right below us the Lower Saranac and Lone- 
some Pond, Round Lake and the Weller Ponds, 
were spread out like a map. Every point and 
island was clearly marked. We could follow the 
course of the Saranac River in all its curves and 
windings, and see the white tents of the hay- 
makers on the wild meadows. Far away to the 



AMPERSAND 71 

northeast stretched the level fields of Blooming- 
dale. But westward all was unbroken wilderness, 
a great sea of woods as far as the eye could reach. 
And how far it can reach from a height like this ! 
What a revelation of the power of sight ! That 
faint blue outline far in the north was Lyon 
Mountain, nearly thirty miles away as the crow 
flies. Those silver gleams a little nearer were the 
waters of St. Regis. The Upper Saranac was 
displayed in all its length and breadth, and beyond 
it the innumerable waters of Fish Creek were 
tangled among the dark woods. The long ranges 
of the hills about the Jordan bounded the western 
horizon, and on the southwest Big Tupper Lake 
was sleeping at the base of Mount Morris. 
Looking past the peak of Stony Creek Mountain, 
which rose sharp and distinct in a line with Am- 
persand, we could trace the path of the Raquette 
River from the distant waters of Long Lake down 
through its far-stretched valley, and catch here 
and there a silvery link of its current. 

But when we turned to the south and east, how 
wonderful and how different was the view ! Here 
was no wide-spread and smiling landscape with 
gleams of silver scattered through it, and soft 
blue haze resting upon its fading verge, but a wild 
land of mountains, stern, rugged, tumultuous, 
rising one beyond another like the waves of a 
stormy ocean, — Ossa piled upon Pelion, — Mcln- 
tyre's sharp peak, and the ragged crest of the 



- JJTLE RISERS 

Gothics, and, above all, Marcy's dome-like head, 
raised just far enough above the others to assert 
his royal right as monarch of the Adirondacks. 

But grandest of all, as seen from this height, 
was Mount Seward — a solemn giant of a mountain, 
standing apart from the others, and looking us 
full in the face. He was clothed from base to 
summit in a dark, unbroken robe of forest. Ou- 
kor-lah, the Indians called him— the Great Eye ; 
and he seemed almost to frown upon us in defi- 
ance. At his feet, so straight below us that it 
seemed almost as if we could cast a stone into it, 
lay the wildest and most beautiful of all the Adi- 
rondack waters — Ampersand Lake. 

On its shore, some five and twenty years ago, 
the now almost forgotten Adirondack Club had 
their shanty — the successor of the " Philosophers' 
Camp " on Follensbee Pond. Agassiz, Appleton, 
Norton, Emerson, Lowell, Hoar, Gray, John 
Holmes, and Stillman were among the company 
who made their resting-place under the shadow 
of Mount Seward. They had bought a tract of 
forest-land completely encircling the pond, cut a 
rough road to it through the woods, and built a 
comfortable log-cabin, to which they purposed to 
return summer after summer. But the Civil War 
broke out, with all its terrible excitement and 
confusion of hurrying hosts : the club existed but 
for two years, and the little house in the wilder- 
ness was abandoned. In 1878, when I spent three 



AMPERSAND 73 

weeks at Ampersand, the cabin was in ruins, and 
surrounded by an almost impenetrable growth of 
bushes. The only philosophers to be seen were 
a family of what the guides quaintly call " quill 
pigs." The roof had fallen to the ground ; rasp- 
berry-bushes thrust themselves through the yawn- 
ing crevices between the logs ; and in front of the 
sunken door-sill lay a rusty, broken iron stove, 
like a dismantled altar on which the fire had gone 
out forever. 

After we had feasted upon the view as long as 
we dared, counted the lakes and streams, and 
found that we could see without a glass more 
than thirty, and recalled the memories of " good 
times " which came to us from almost every point 
of the compass, we unpacked the camera and 
proceeded to take some pictures. 

If you are a photographer, and have anything 
of the amateur's passion for your art, you will 
appreciate my pleasure and my anxiety. Never 
before, so far as I knew, had a camera been set 
up on Ampersand. I had but eight plates with 
me. The views were all very distant and all at 
a downward angle. The power of the light at 
this elevation was an unknown quantity. And 
the wind was sweeping vigorously across the open 
summit of the mountain. I put in my smallest 
stop, and prepared for short exposures. 

My instrument was a thing called a tourograph, 
which differs from most other cameras in having 



74 LITTLE RIVERS 

the plate-holder on top of the box. The plates 
are dropped into a groove below, and then moved 
into focus, after which the cap is removed and 
the exposure made. 

I set my instrument for Ampersand Pond, 
sighted the picture through the ground glass, and 
measured the focus. Then I waited for a quiet 
moment, dropped the plate, moved it carefully 
forward to the proper mark, and went around to 
take off the cap. I found that I already had it in 
my hand, and the plate had been exposed for 
about thirty seconds with a sliding focus ! 

I expostulated with myself. I said : " You are 
excited ; you are stupid ; you are unworthy of the 
name of photographer. Light-writer! You 
ought to write with a whitewash-brush!" The 
reproof was effectual, and from that moment all 
went well. The plates dropped smoothly, the 
camera was steady, the exposure was correct. 
Six good pictures were made, to recall, so far as 
black and white could do it, the delights of that day. 

It has been my good luck to climb many of the 
peaks of the Adirondacks,— -Dix, the Dial, Hurri- 
cane, the Giant of the Valley, Marcy, and White- 
face, — but I do not think the outlook from any of 
them is so wonderful and lovely as that from little 
Ampersand ; and I reckon among my most valu- 
able chattels the plates of glass on which the sun 
has traced for me (who cannot draw) the outlines 
of that loveliest landscape. 



AMPERSAND 75 

The downward journey was swift. We halted 
for an hour or two beside a trickling spring, a few 
rods below the summit, to eat our lunch. Then, 
jumping, running, and sometimes sliding, we 
made the descent, passed in safety by the dreaded 
lair of the hornet, and reached Bartlett's as the 
fragrance of the evening pancake was softly dif- 
fused through the twilight. 

Mark that day, memory, with a double star in 
your catalogue! 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 



£888; 




" Scotland is the home of romance because it is the home of 
Scott, Burns, Black, Macdonald, Stevenson, and Barrie 
— and of thousands of men like that old Highlander in 
kilts on the tow-path, who loves what they have written. 
I would wager he has a copy of Burns in his sporran, 
and has quoted him half a dozen times to the grim Celt 
who is walking with him. Those old boys don't read for 
excitement or knowledge, but because they love their 
land and their people and their religion — and their great 
•writers simply express their emotions for them in words 
they can understand. You and I come over here, with 
thousands of our countrymen, to borrow their emotions." 
— Robert Bridges : Overheard in A ready. 




A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 




Y friend the triumphant democrat, 
OJj^fl^jLT fiercest of radicals and kindest of 
!>3llAV^II/! men, expresses his scorn for mon- 
archical institutions (and his invincible 
love for his native Scotland) by tenanting, sum- 
mer after summer, a famous castle among the 
heathery Highlands. There he proclaims the 
most uncompromising Americanism in a speech 
that grows more broadly Scotch with every week 
of his emancipation from the influence of the 
clipped, commercial accent of New York, and 
casts contempt on feudalism by playing the part 
of lord of the manor to such a perfection of high- 
handed beneficence that the people of the glen are 
all become his clansmen, and his gentle lady 
would be the patron saint of the district— if the 
republican theology of Scotland could only admit 
saints among the elect. 

Every year he sends trophies of game to his 



80 LITTLE RIVERS 

friends across the sea— birds that are as tooth- 
some and wild-flavoured as if they had not been 
hatched under the tyranny of the game-laws. He 
has a pleasant trick of making them grateful to 
the imagination as well as to the palate by pack- 
ing them in heather. I'll warrant that Aaron's 
rod bore no bonnier blossoms than these stiff lit- 
tle bushes — and none more magical. For every 
time I take up a handful of them they transport 
me to the Highlands, and send me tramping once 
more, with knapsack and fishing-rod, over the 
braes and down the burns. 



BELL-HEATHER 

Some of my happiest meanderings in Scotland 
have been taken under the lead of a book. In- 
deed, for travel in a strange country there can be 
no better courier. Not a guide-book, I mean, 
but a real book, and, by preference, a novel. 

Fiction, like wine, tastes best in the place 
where it was grown. And the scenery of a for- 
eign land (including architecture, which is arti- 
ficial landscape) grows less dreamlike and unreal 
to our perception when we people it with familiar 
characters from "our favourite novels. Even on 
a first journey we feel ourselves among old 
friends. Thus to read Romola in Florence, and 
Les Miserables in Paris, and Lorna Doone on 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 81 

Exmoor, and The Heart of Midlothian in Edin- 
burgh, and David Balfour in the Pass of 
Glencoe, and The Pirate in the Shetland Isles, 
is to get a new sense of the possibilities of life. 
All these things have I done with much inward 
contentment ; and other things of like quality have 
I yet in store; as, for example, the conjunction 
of The Bonnie Brier-Bush with Drumtochty, 
and The Little Minister with Thrums, and The 
Raiders with Galloway. But I never expect to 
pass pleasanter days than those I spent with 
A Princess of Thule among the Hebrides. 

For then, to begin with, I was young, which 
is an unearned increment of delight sure to be 
confiscated by the envious years and never re- 
gained. But even youth itself was not to be 
compared with the exquisite felicity of being 
deeply and desperately in love with Sheila, the 
clear-eyed heroine of that charming book. In 
this innocent passion my gray-haired comrades, 
Howard Crosby, the Chancellor of the University 
of New York, and my father, an ex-moderator of 
the Presbyterian General Assembly, were ardent 
but generous rivals. 

Bountiful Heaven, source of all our blessings, 
how great is the joy and how fascinating the pur- 
suit of such an ethereal affection ! It enlarges 
the heart without embarrassing the conscience. 
It is a cup of pure gladness with no bitterness in 



82 LITTLE RIVERS 

its dregs. It spends the present moment with a 
free hand, and yet leaves no undesirable mortgage 
upon the future. King Arthur, the founder of 
the Round Table, expressed a conviction, accord- 
ing to Tennyson, that the most important element 
in a young knight's education is " the maiden 
passion for a maid." Surely the safest form in 
which this course may be taken is by falling in 
love with a girl in a book. It is the only affair 
of the kind into which a young fellow can enter 
without responsibility, and out of which he can 
always emerge, when necessary, without discredit. 
And as for the old fellow who still keeps up this 
education of the heart, and worships his heroine 
with the ardor of a John Ridd and the fidelity of 
a Henry Esmond, I maintain that he is exempt 
from all the penalties of declining years. The 
man who can love a girl in a book may be old, 
but never aged. 

So we sailed, lovers all three, among the West- 
ern Isles, and whatever ship it was that carried us, 
her figurehead was always the Princess Sheila. 
Along the ruffled blue waters of the sounds and 
lochs that wind among the roots of unpronounce- 
able mountains, and past the dark hills of Skye, 
and through the unnumbered flocks of craggy 
islets where the sea-birds nest, the spell of the 
sweet Highland maid drew us, and we were pil- 
grims to the Ultima Thule where she lived and 
reigned. 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 83 

The Lewis, with its tail-piece, the Harris, is 
quite a sizable island to be appended to such a 
country as Scotland. It is a number of miles 
long, and another number of miles wide, and it 
has a number of thousand inhabitants, — I should 
say as many as three quarters of an inhabitant to 
the square mile, — and the conditions of agriculture 
and the fisheries are extremely interesting and 
quarrelsome. All these I duly studied at the 
time, and reported in a series of intolerably dull 
letters to the newspaper which supplied a finan- 
cial basis for my sentimental journey. They are 
full of information, but I have been amused to 
note, after these many years, how wide they steer 
of the true motive and interest of the excursion. 
There is not even a hint of Sheila in any of them. 
Youth, after all, is but a shamefaced and secre- 
tive season ; like the fringed polygala, it hides its 
fertile blossom underground, while it makes a 
show of unmeaning flowers on the surface. 

It was Sheila's dark-blue dress and sailor hat 
with the white feather that we looked for as we 
loafed through the streets of Stornoway, that 
quaint metropolis of the herring-trade, where 
strings of fish alternated with boxes of flowers in 
the windows, and handfuls of fish were spread 
upon the roofs to dry just as the sliced apples are 
exposed upon the kitchen sheds of New England 
in September, and dark-haired women were carry- 
ing great creels of fish on their shoulders, and 



84 LITTLE RIVERS 

groups of sunburned men were smoking among 
the fishing-boats on the beach and talking about 
fish, and sea-gulls were floating over the houses 
with their heads turning from side to side and 
their bright eyes peering everywhere for uncon- 
sidered trifles of fish, and the whole atmosphere 
of the place, physical, mental, and moral, was 
pervaded with fish. It was Sheila's soft, sing- 
song Highland speech that we heard through the 
long, luminous twilight in the pauses of that 
friendly chat on the balcony of the little inn where 
a good fortune brought us acquainted with Sam 
Bough, the mellow Edinburgh painter. It was 
Sheila's low sweet brow, and long black eyelashes, 
and tender blue eyes that we saw before us as we 
loitered over the open moorland, a far-rolling sea 
of brown billows, reddened with patches of bell- 
heather, and brightened here and there with little 
lakes lying wide open to the sky. And were not 
these peat-cutters, with the big baskets on their 
backs, walking in silhouette along the ridges, the 
people that Sheila loved and tried to help? And 
were not these crofters' cottages with thatched 
roofs, like beehives, blending almost impercepti- 
bly with the landscape, the dwellings into which 
she planned to introduce the luxury of windows? 
And were not these Standing Stones of Callernish, 
huge tombstones of a vanished religion, the roof- 
less temple from which the Druids paid their 
westernmost adoration to the setting sun as he 
sank into the Atlantic— was not this the place 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 85 

where Sheila picked the bunch of wild flowers 
and gave it to her lover? There is nothing in 
history, I am sure, half so real to us as some of 
the things in fiction. The influence of an event 
upon our character is little affected by considera- 
tions as to whether or not it ever happened. 

There were three churches in Stornoway, all 
Presbyterian, of course, and therefore full of pious 
emulation. The idea of securing an American 
preacher for an August Sabbath seemed to fall 
upon them simultaneously, and to offer the pros- 
pect of novelty without too much danger. The 
brethren of the U. P. congregation, being a trifle 
more gleg than the others, arrived first at the inn, 
and secured the promise of a morning sermon 
from Chancellor Howard Crosby. The session 
of the Free Kirk came in a body a little later, and 
to them my father pledged himself for the evening 
sermon. The senior elder of the Established 
Kirk, a snuff -taking man and very deliberate, was 
the last to appear, and to his request for an after- 
noon sermon there was nothing left to offer but 
the services of the young probationer in theology. 
I could see that it struck him as a perilous ad- 
venture. Questions about "the fundamentals" 
glinted in his watery eye. He crossed and un- 
crossed his legs with solemnity, and blew his nose 
so frequently in a huge red silk handkerchief that 
it seemed like a signal of danger. At last he un- 
burdened himself of his hesitations : 

" Ah'm not saying that the young man will not 



86 LITTLE RIVERS 

be orthodox — ahem! But ye know, sir, in the 
Kirk, we are not using hymns, but just the pure 
Psawms of Daffit, in the meetrical fairsion. And 
ye know, sir, they are ferry tifficult in the reating, 
whatefer, for a young man, and one that iss a 
stranger. And if his father will just be coming 
with him in the pulpit, to see that nothing iss said 
amiss, that will be ferry comforting to the congre- 
gation." 

So the dear governor swallowed his laughter 
gravely and went surety for his son. They ap- 
peared together in the church, a barn-like edifice, 
with great galleries half-way between the floor 
and the roof. Still higher up, the pulpit stuck 
like a swallow's nest against the wall. The two 
ministers climbed the precipitous stair, and found 
themselves in a box so narrow that one must 
stand perforce, while the other sat upon the only 
seat. In this " ride-and-tie " fashion they went 
through the service. When it was time to preach, 
the young man dropped the doctrines as discreetly 
as possible upon the upturned countenances be- 
neath him. I have forgotten now what it was all 
about, but there was a quotation from the Song 
of Solomon, ending with " Sweet is thy voice, and 
thy countenance is comely." And when it came 
to that, the probationer's eyes (if the truth must 
be told) went searching through that sea of faces 
for one that should be familiar to his heart, and 
to which he might make a personal application 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 87 

of the Scripture passage — even the face of 
Sheila. 

There are rivers in the Lewis, at least two of 
them, and on one of these we had the offer of a 
rod for a day's fishing. Accordingly we cast lots, 
and the lot fell upon the youngest, and I went 
forth with a tall, red-headed gillie, to try for my 
first salmon. The Whitewater came singing 
down out of the moorland into a rocky valley, and 
there was a merry curl of air on the pools, and 
the silver fish were leaping from the stream. The 
gillie handled the big rod as if it had been a fairy's 
wand, but to me it was like a giant's spear. It 
was a very different affair from fishing with five 
ounces of split bamboo on a Long Island trout- 
pond. The monstrous fly, like an awkward bird, 
went fluttering everywhere but in the right direc- 
tion. It was the mercy of Providence that pre- 
served the gillie's life. But he was very patient 
and forbearing, leading me on from one pool to 
another, as I spoiled the water and snatched the 
hook out of the very mouth of rising fish, until at 
last we found a salmon that knew even less about 
the niceties of salmon-fishing than I did. He 
seized the fly firmly before I could pull it away, 
and then, in a moment, I found myself attached 
to a creature with the strength of a whale and the 
agility of a flying-fish. He led me rushing up 
and down the bank like a madman. He played 
on the surface like a whirlwind, and sulked at the 



88 LITTLE RIVERS 

bottom like a stone. He meditated, with ominous 
delay, in the middle of the deepest pool, and then, 
darting across the river, flung himself clean out 
of the water and landed far up on the green turf of 
the opposite shore. My heart melted like a snow- 
flake in the sea, and I thought that I had lost him 
forever. But he rolled quietly back into the stream 
with the hook still set in his nose. A few min- 
utes afterward I brought him within reach of the 
gaff, and my first salmon was glittering on the 
grass beside me. 

Then I remembered that William Black had 
described this very fish in A Princess of Thule. 
I pulled the book from my pocket, and, light- 
ing a pipe, sat down to read that delightful chapter 
over again. The breeze played softly down the 
valley. The warm sunlight was filled with the 
musical hum of insects and the murmur of falling 
waters. I thought how much pleasanter it would 
have been to learn salmon-fishing, as Black's hero 
did, from the Maid of Borva, than from a red- 
headed gillie. But then, Lavender's salmon, after 
leaping across the stream, got away, whereas mine 
was safe. A man cannot have everything in this 
world. I picked a spray of rosy bell-heather from 
the bank of the river, and pressed it between the 
leaves of the book in memory of Sheila. 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 89 

II 

COMMON HEATHER 

It is not half as far from Albany to Aberdeen 
as it is from New York to London. In fact, I 
venture to say that an American on foot will find 
himself less a foreigner in Scotland than in any 
other country in the Old World. There is some- 
thing warm and hospitable — if he knew the lan- 
guage well enough he would call it conthy — in the 
greeting that he gets from the shepherd on the 
moor, and the conversation that he holds with the 
farmer's wife in the stone cottage, where he stops 
to ask for a drink of milk and a bit of oat-cake. 
He feels that there must be a drop of Scotch some- 
where in his mingled blood, or at least that the 
texture of his thought and feelings has been partly 
woven on a Scottish loom — perhaps the Shorter 
Catechism, or Robert Burns's poems, or the 
romances of Sir Walter Scott. At all events, he 
is among a kindred and comprehending people. 
They do not speak English in the same way that 
he does,— through the nose,— but they think very 
much more in his mental dialect than the English 
do. They are independent and wide awake, curi- 
ous and full of personal interest. The wayside 
mind in Inverness or Perth runs more to muscle 
and less to fat, has more active vanity and less 
passive pride, is more inquisitive and excitable 



9 o LITTLE RIVERS 

and sympathetic, — in short, to use a symbolist's 
description, it is more apt to be red-headed, — than 
in Surrey or Somerset. Scotchmen ask more 
questions about America than Englishmen, but 
fewer foolish ones. You will never hear them 
inquiring whether there is any good bear-hunting 
in the neighborhood of Boston, or whether Shake- 
speare is much read in the States. They have a 
healthy respect for our institutions, and have 
quite forgiven (if, indeed, they ever resented) 
that little affair in 1776. They are all born Lib- 
erals. When a Scotchman says he is a Conser- 
vative, it only means that he is a Liberal with 
hesitations. 

And yet in North Britain the American pedes- 
trian will not find that amused and somewhat 
condescending toleration for his peculiarities, that 
placid willingness to make the best of all his va- 
garies of speech and conduct, that he finds in 
South Britain. In an English town you may do 
pretty much what you like on a Sunday, even to 
the extent of wearing a billycock hat to church, 
and people will put up with it from a countryman 
of Buffalo Bill and the Wild West Show. But in 
a Scotch village, if you whistle in the street on a 
Lord's Day, though it be a Moody and Sankey 
tune, you will be likely to get, as I did, an ad- 
monition from some long-legged, grizzled elder : 

" Young man, do ye no ken it's the Sawbath 
Day? " 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 91 

I recognized trie reproof of the righteous, an 
excellent oil which doth not break the head, and 
took it gratefully at the old man's hands. For 
did it not prove that he regarded me as a man 
and a brother, a creature capable of being civil- 
ized and saved? 

It was in the gray town of Dingwall that I had 
this bit of pleasant correction, as I was on the 
way to a fishing tramp through Sutherlandshire. 
This northwest corner of Great Britain is the best 
place in the whole island for a modest and impe- 
cunious angler. There are, or there were a few 
years ago, wild lochs and streams still practically 
free, and a man who is content with small things 
can pick up some very pretty sport from the high- 
land inns, and make a good basket of memorable 
experiences every week. 

The inn at Lairg, overlooking the narrow waters 
of Loch Shin, was embowered in honeysuckles, 
and full of creature comfort. But there were too 
many other men with rods there to suit my taste. 
" The feesh in this loch," said the boatman, " iss 
not so numerous ass the feeshermen, but more 
wise. There iss not one of them that hass not 
felt the hook, and they know ferry well what side 
of the fly has the forkit tail." 

At Altnaharra, in the shadow of Ben Clebrig, 
there was a cozy little house with good fare, and 
abundant trout-fishing in Loch Naver and Loch 
Meadie. It was there that I fell in with a wan- 



92 LITTLE RIVERS 

dering pearl-peddler who gathered his wares from 
the mussels in the moorland streams. They were 
not of the finest quality, these Scotch pearls, but 
they had pretty, changeable colours of pink and 
blue upon them, like the iridescent light that 
plays over the heather in the long northern even- 
ings. I thought it must be a hard life for the 
man, wading day after day in the ice-cold water, 
and groping among the coggly, sliddery stones for 
the shell- fish, and cracking open perhaps a thou- 
sand before he could find one pearl. " Oh, yess," 
said he, " and it iss not an easy life, and I am not 
saying that it will be so warm and dry ass lining 
in a rich house. But it iss the life that I am fit 
for, and I hef my own time and my thoughts to 
mysel', and that is a ferry goot thing ; and then, 
sir, I haf found the Pearl of Great Price, and I 
think upon that day and night." 

Under the black, shattered peaks of Ben Lao- 
ghal, where I saw an eagle poising day after day 
as if some invisible centripetal force bound him 
forever to that small circle of air, there was a loch 
with plenty of brown trout and a few Salmo ferox; 
and down at Tongue there was a little river where 
the sea-trout sometimes came up with the tide. 

Here I found myself upon the north coast, and 
took the road eastward between the mountains 
and the sea. It was a beautiful region of desola- 
tion. There were rocky glens cutting across the 
road, and occasionally a brawling stream ran down 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 93 

to the salt water, breaking the line of cliffs with 
a little bay and a half -moon of yellow sand. The 
heather covered all the hills. There were no 
trees, and but few houses. The chief signs of 
human labour were the rounded piles of peat, and 
the square cuttings in the moor marking the places 
where the peat-cutters had gathered their harvests. 
The long straths were once cultivated, and every 
patch of arable land had its group of cottages full 
of children. The human harvest has always been 
the richest and most abundant in the Highlands ; 
but unfortunately the supply exceeded the de- 
mand ; and so the crofters were evicted, and great 
flocks of sheep were put in possession of the land ; 
and now the sheep-pastures have been changed 
into deer-forests ; and far and wide along the val- 
leys and across the hills there is not a trace of 
habitation, except the heaps of stones and the 
clumps of straggling bushes which mark the sites 
of lost homes. But what is one country's loss is 
another country's gain. Canada and the United 
States are infinitely the richer for the tough, 
strong, fearless, honest men that were dispersed 
from these lonely straths to make new homes 
across the sea. 

It was after sundown when I reached the thinly 
scattered houses of Melvich, and the long day's 
journey had left me weary. But the inn, with 
its red-curtained windows, looked bright and re- 
assuring. Thoughts of dinner and a good bed 



94 LITTLE RIVERS 

comforted my spirit —prematurely. For the inn 
was full. There were but five bedrooms and two 
parlors. The gentlemen who had the neighbor- 
ing shootings occupied three bedrooms and a 
parlor; the other two bedrooms had just been 
taken by the English fishermen who had passed 
me on the road an hour ago in the mail-coach (oh, 
why had I not suspected that treacherous ve- 
hicle?) ; and the landlord and his wife assured me, 
with equal firmness and sympathy, that there was 
not another cot or pair of blankets in the house. 
I believed them, and was sinking into despair 
when Sandy M'Kaye appeared on the scene as my 
angel of deliverance. Sandy was a small, with- 
ered, wiry man, dressed in rusty gray, with an 
immense white collar thrusting out its points on 
either side of his chin, and a black stock climbing 
over the top of it. I guessed from his speech 
that he had once lived in the lowlands. He had 
hoped to be engaged as a gillie by the shooting- 
party, but had been disappointed. He had wanted 
to be taken by the English fishermen, but another 
and younger man had stepped in before him. 
Now Sandy saw in me his Predestinated Oppor- 
tunity, and had no idea of letting it post up the 
road that night to the next village. He cleared his 
throat respectfully and cut into the conversation : 
" Ah'm thinkin' the gentleman micht find a 
coomfortaible lodgin' wi' the weedow Macphair- 
son, a wee bittie doon the road. Her dochter is 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 



95 



awa' in Ameriky, an' the room is a verra fine room, 
an' it is a peety to hae it stannin' idle, an' ye 
wudna mind the few steps to and fro tae yir meals 
here, sir, wud ye? An' if ye 'ill gang wi' me 
efter dinner, ah'll be prood to shoo ye the hoose." 

So, after a good dinner with the English fish- 
ermen, Sandy piloted me down the road through 
the thickening dusk. I remember a hoodie-crow 
flew close behind us with a choking, ghostly 
cough that startled me. The Macpherson cottage 
was a snug little house of stone, with fuchsias 
and roses growing in the front yard; and the 
widow was a douce old lady, with a face like a 
winter apple in the month of April, wrinkled, but 
still rosy. She was a little doubtful about enter- 
taining strangers, but when she heard I was from 
America she opened the doors of her house and 
her heart. And when, by a subtle cross-exami- 
nation that would have been a credit to the wife of 
a Connecticut deacon, she discovered the fact that 
her lodger was a minister, she did two things, 
with equal and immediate fervour : she brought 
out the big Bible and asked him to conduct even- 
ing worship, and she produced a bottle of old 
Glenlivet and begged him to " guard against tak- 
kin' cauld by takkin' a glass of speerits." 

It was a very pleasant fortnight at Melvich. 
Mistress Macpherson was so motherly that " tak- 
kin' cauld " was reduced to a permanent impossi- 
bility. The other men at the inn proved to be 



96 LITTLE RIVERS 

very companionable fellows, quite different from 
the monsters of insolence that my anger had 
imagined in the moment of disappointment. The 
shooting-party kept the table abundantly supplied 
with grouse and hares and highland venison ; and 
there was a piper to march up and down before 
the window and play while we ate dinner— a very 
complimentary and disquieting performance. But 
there are many occasions in life when pride can 
be entertained only at the expense of comfort. 

Of course Sandy was my gillie. It was a fine 
sight to see him exhibiting the tiny American 
trout-rod, tied with silk ribbons in its delicate 
case, to the other gillies and exulting over them. 
Every morning he would lead me away through 
the heather to some lonely loch on the shoulders 
of the hills, from which we could look down upon 
the Northern Sea and the blue Orkney Isles far 
away across the Pentland Firth. Sometimes we 
would find a loch with a boat on it, and drift up 
and down, casting along the shores. Sometimes, 
in spite of Sandy's confident predictions, no boat 
could be found, and then I must put on the mack- 
intosh trousers and wade out over my hips into 
the water, and circumambulate the pond, throw- 
ing the flies as far as possible toward the middle, 
and feeling my way carefully along the bottom 
with the long net-handle, while Sandy danced on 
the bank in an agony of apprehension lest his 
Predestinated Opportunity should step into a deep 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 97 

hole and be drowned. It was a curious fact in 
natural history that on the lochs with boats the 
trout were in the shallow water, but in the boat- 
less lochs they were away out in the depths. 
" Juist the total depraivity o' troots," said Sandy, 
" an' terrible fateegin'." 

Sandy had an aversion to commit himself to 
definite statements on any subject not theological. 
If you asked him how long the morning's tramp 
would be, it was " no verra long ; juist a bit ayant 
the hull yonner." And if, at the end of the sev- 
enth mile, you complained that it was much too 
far, he would never do more than admit that ' ' it 
micht be shorter." If you called him to rejoice 
over a trout that weighed close upon two pounds, 
he allowed that it was "no bad — but there's 
bigger anes i' the loch, gin we cud but wile them 
oot." And at lunch-time, when we turned out a 
full basket of shining fish on the heather, the 
most that he would say, while his eyes snapped 
with joy and pride, was, " Aweel, we canna com- 
plain the day." 

Then he would gather an armful of dried heather- 
stems for kindling, and dig out a few roots and 
crooked limbs of the long-vanished forest from 
the dry, brown, peaty soil, and make our camp- 
fire of prehistoric wood,— just for the pleasant, 
homelike look of the blaze, —and sit down beside 
it to eat our lunch. Heat is the least of the bene- 
fits that man gets from fire. It is the sign of 



98 LITTLE RIVERS 

cheerfulness and good comradeship. I would 
not willingly satisfy my hunger, even in a summer 
nooning, without a little flame burning on a rustic 
altar to consecrate and enliven the feast. When 
the bread and cheese were finished, and the pipes 
were filled with Virginia tobacco, Sandy would 
begin to tell me, very solemnly and respectfully, 
about the mistakes I had made in the fishing that 
day, and mourn over the fact that the largest fish 
had not been hooked. There was a strong strain 
of pessimism in Sandy, and he enjoyed this part 
of the sport immensely. 

But he was at his best in the walk home through 
the lingering twilight, when the murmur of the 
sea trembled through the air, and the incense of 
burning peat floated up from the cottages, and the 
stars blossomed one by one in the pale-green sky. 
Then Sandy dandered on at his ease down the 
hills, and discoursed of things in heaven and earth. 
He was an unconscious follower of the theology 
of the Reverend John Jasper, of Richmond, Vir- 
ginia, and rejected the Copernican theory of the 
universe as inconsistent with the history of Joshua. 
■* Gin the sun doesna muve," said he, " what for 
wad Joshua be tellin' him to stond steel? Ah wad 
suner beleeve there was a mistak' in the veesible 
heevens than ae fault in the Guid Buik. " Where- 
upon we held long discourse of astronomy and 
inspiration ; but Sandy concluded it with a phil- 
osophic word which left little to be said: "Aweel, 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 



99 



yon teelescope is a wonnerful deescovery ; but ah 
dinna think the less o' the Baible." 



Ill 

WHITE HEATHER 

Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. 
You never can tell what pebble she will pick up 
from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, 
or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will 
preserve as the symbol of 

"Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 

She has her own scale of values for these memen- 
tos, and knows nothing of the market price of 
precious stones or the costly splendour of rare 
orchids. The thing that pleases her is the thing 
that she will hold fast. And yet I do not doubt 
that the most important things are always the best 
remembered; only we must learn that the real 
importance of what we see and hear in the world 
is to be measured at last by its meaning, its sig- 
nificance, its intimacy with the heart of our heart 
and the life of our life. And when we find a 
little token of the past very safely and imperish- 
ably kept among our recollections, we must be- 
lieve that memory has made no mistake. It is 
because that little thing has entered into our ex- 



ioo LITTLE RIVERS 

perience most deeply that it stays with us and we 
cannot lose it. 

You have half forgotten many a famous scene 
that you travelled far to look upon. You cannot 
clearly recall the sublime peak of Mont Blanc, the 
roaring curve of Niagara, the vast dome of St. 
Peter's. The music of Patti's crystalline voice 
has left no distinct echo in your remembrance, 
and the blossoming of the century-plant is dimmer 
than the shadow of a dream. But there is a 
nameless valley among the hills where you can 
still trace every curve of the stream, and see the 
foam-bells floating on the pool below the bridge, 
and the long moss wavering in the current. There 
is a rustic song of a girl passing through the fields 
at sunset that still repeats its far-off cadence in 
your listening ears. There is a small flower trem- 
bling on its stem in some hidden nook beneath 
the open sky that never withers through all the 
changing years ; the wind passeth over it, but it 
is not gone — it abides forever in your soul, an 
amaranthine blossom. 

White heather is not an easy flower to find. 
You may look for it among the highlands for a 
day without success. And when it is discovered, 
there is little outward charm to commend it. It 
lacks the grace of the dainty bells that hang so 
abundantly from the Erica Tetralix, and the pink 
glow of the innumerable blossoms of the common 
heather. But then it is a symbol. It is the 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 101 

Scotch Edelweiss. It means sincere affection, 
and unselfish love, and tender wishes as pure as 
prayers. I shall always remember the evening 
when I found the white heather on the moorland 
above Glen Ericht. Or, rather, it was not I that 
found it (for I have little luck in the discovery of 
good omens, and have never plucked a four -leaved 
clover in my life), but my companion, the gentle 
Mistress of the Glen, whose hair was whiter than 
the tiny blossoms, and yet whose eyes were far 
quicker than mine to see and name every flower 
that bloomed in those lofty, wide-spread fields. 

Ericht Water is formed by the marriage of two 
streams, one flowing out of Strath Ardle and the 
other descending from Cairn Gowar through the 
long, lonely Pass of Glenshee. The Ericht be- 
gins at the bridge of Cally, and its placid, beauti- 
ful glen, unmarred by railway or factory, reaches 
almost down to Blairgowrie. On the southern 
bank, but far above the water, runs the highroad 
to Braemar and the Linn of Dee. On the other 
side of the river, nestling among the trees, is the 
low white manor-house, 

"An ancient home of peace." 

It is a place where one who had been wearied and 
perchance sore wounded in the battle of life might 
well desire to be carried, as Arthur to the island 
valley of Avilion, for rest and healing. 

I have no thought of renewing the conflicts and 



io2 ■ LITTLE RIVERS 

cares that filled that summer with sorrow. There 
were fightings without and fears within; there 
was the surrender of an enterprise that had been 
cherished since boyhood, and the bitter sense of 
irremediable weakness that follows such a reverse ; 
there was a touch of that wrath with those we 
love which, as Coleridge says, 

" Doth work like madness in the brain " ; 

and, flying from these troubles across the sea, I 
had found my old comrade of merrier days sen- 
tenced to death, and caught but a brief glimpse 
of his pale, brave face as he went away into exile. 
At such a time the sun and the light and the moon 
and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return 
after rain. But through those clouds the Mis- 
tress of the Glen came to meet me — a stranger 
till then, but an appointed friend, a minister of 
needed grace, an angel of quiet comfort. The 
thick mists of rebellion, mistrust, and despair 
have long since rolled away, and against the back- 
ground of the hills her figure stands out clearly, 
dressed in the fashion of fifty years ago, with the 
snowy hair gathered close beneath her widow's 
cap, and a spray of white heather in her out- 
stretched hand. 

There were no other guests in the house by 
the river during those still days in the central 
peace of midsummer. Every morning, while the 
Mistress was busied with her household cares and 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 103 

letters, I would be out in the fields hearing the 
lark sing, and watching the rabbits as they ran to 
and fro, scattering the dew from the grass in a 
glittering spray. Or perhaps I would be angling 
down the river, with the swift pressure of the 
water around my knees, and an inarticulate cur- 
rent of cooling thoughts flowing on and on through 
my brain like the murmur of the stream. Every 
afternoon there were long walks with the Mis- 
tress in the old-fashioned garden, where wonder- 
ful roses were blooming; or through the dark, 
fir-shaded den where the wild burn dropped down 
to join the river ; or out upon the high moor un- 
der the waning orange sunset. Every night there 
were luminous and restful talks beside the open 
fire in the library, when the words came clear and 
calm from the heart, unperturbed by the vain de- 
sire of saying brilliant things, which turns so 
much of our conversation into a combat of wits 
instead of an interchange of thoughts. Talk like 
this is possible only between two. The arrival 
of a third person sets the lists for a tournament, 
and offers the prize of approbation for a verbal 
victory. But where there are only two, the armour 
is laid aside, and there is no call to thrust and 
parry. 

One of the two should be a good listener, sym- 
pathetic, but not silent, giving confidence in order 
to attract it — and of this art a woman is the best 
master. But its finest secrets do not come to her 



io4 LITTLE RIVERS 

until she has passed beyond the uncertain season 
of compliments and conquests, and entered into 
the serenity of a tranquil age. 

What is this foolish thing that men say about 
the impossibility of true intimacy and converse 
between the young and the old ? Hamerton, for 
example, in his book on Human Intercourse, 
would have us believe that a difference in years 
is a barrier between hearts. For my part, I have 
more often found it an open door, and a security 
of generous and tolerant welcome for the young 
soldier, who comes in tired and dusty from the 
battle-field, to tell his story of defeat or victory in 
the garden of still thoughts where old age is rest- 
ing in the peace of honourablejdis charge. I. like 
what Robert Louis Stevenson says about it in his 
essay on Talk and Talkers : 

" Not only is the presence of the aged in itself 
remedial, but their minds are stored with anti- 
dotes, wisdom's simples, plain considerations 
overlooked by youth. They have matter to com- 
municate, be they never so stupid. Their talk is 
not merely literature, it is great literature ; classic 
by virtue of the speaker's detachment ; studded, 
like a book of travel, with things we should not 
otherwise have learned. . . . Where youth agrees 
with age, not where they differ, wisdom lies ; and 
it is when the young disciple finds his heart to 
beat in tune with his gray-haired teacher's that a 
lesson may be learned." 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 105 

The conversation of the Mistress of the Glen 
shone like the light and distilled like the dew, not 
only by virtue of what she said, but still more by 
virtue of what she was. Her face was a good 
counsel against discouragement ; and the cheerful 
quietude of her demeanour was a rebuke to all re- 
bellious, cowardly, and discontented thoughts. 
It was not the striking novelty or profundity of 
her commentary on life that made it memorable ; 
it was simply the truth of what she said and the 
gentleness with which she said it. Epigrams are 
worth little for guidance to the perplexed, and less 
for comfort to the wounded. But the plain, 
homely sayings which come from a soul that has 
learned the lesson of patient courage in the school 
of real experience, fall upon the wound like drops 
of balsam, and like a soothing lotion upon the 
eyes smarting and blinded with passion. 

She spoke of those who had walked with her 
long ago in her garden, and for whose sake, now 
that they had all gone into the world of light, 
every flower was doubly dear. Would it be a 
true proof of loyalty to them if she lived gloomily 
or despondently because they were away? She 
spoke of the duty of being ready to welcome hap- 
piness as well as to endure pain, and of the strength 
that endurance wins by being grateful for small 
daily joys, like the evening light, and the smell 
of roses, and the singing of birds. She spoke of 
the faith that rests on the Unseen Wisdom and 



106 LITTLE RIVERS 

Love like a child on its mother's breast ; and of the 
melting away of doubts in the warmth of an effort 
to do some good in the world. And if that effort 
has conflict, and adventure, and confused noise, 
and mistakes, and even defeats mingled with it, 
in the stormy years of youth, is not that to be ex- 
pected? The burn roars and leaps in the den, 
and the stream chafes and frets through the rapids 
of the glen, and the river does not grow calm and 
smooth until it hears the sea. Courage is a virtue 
that the young cannot spare ; to lose it is to grow 
old before the time ; it is better to make a thou- 
sand mistakes and suffer a thousand reverses than 
to run away from the battle. Resignation is the 
courage of old age ; it will grow in its own sea- 
son ; and it is a good day when it comes to us. 
Then there are no more disappointments ; for we 
have learned that it is even better to desire the 
things that we have than to have the things that 
we desire. And is not the best of all our hopes 
— the hope of immortality — always before us? 
How can we be dull or heavy while we have that 
new experience to look forward to? It will be 
the most joyful of all our travels and adventures. 
It will bring us our best acquaintances and friend- 
ships. But there is only one way to get ready for 
immortality, and that is to love this life, and live 
it as bravely and cheerfully and faithfully as we 
can. 

So my gentle teacher with the silver hair showed 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 107 

me the treasures of her ancient, simple faith ; and 
I felt that no sermons, nor books, nor arguments 
can strengthen the doubting heart so deeply as 
just to come into touch with a soul that is founded 
upon a rock, and has proved the truth of that 
plain religion whose highest philosophy is " Trust 
in the Lord, and do good." At the end of the 
evening the household was gathered for prayers, 
and the Mistress kneeled among her servants, 
leading them, in her soft Scottish accent, through 
the old familiar petitions for pardon for the errors 
of the day, and refreshing sleep through the night, 
and strength for the morrow. It is good to be in 
a land, whatever be the name of the church that 
teaches it, where the people are not ashamed to 
pray. I have shared the blessing of Catholics at 
their table in lowly huts among the mountains of 
the Tyrol, and knelt with Covenanters at their 
household altar in the glens of Scotland ; and all 
around the world, where the spirit of prayer is, 
there is peace. The genius of the Scotch has 
made many and great contributions to literature, 
but none, I think, more precious, and none that 
comes closer to the heart, than the prayer which 
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote for his family in 
distant Samoa the night before he died : 

" We beseech thee, Lord, to behold us with 
favour, folk of many families and nations, gath- 
ered together in the peace of this roof : weak men 
and women subsisting under the covert of thy 



io8 LITTLE RIVERS 

patience. Be patient still ; sutler us yet a while 
longer — with our broken promises of good, with 
our idle endeavours against evil — suffer us a while 
longer to endure, and (if it may be) help us to do 
better. Bless to us our extraordinary mercies ; 
if the day come when these must be taken, have 
us play the man under affliction. Be with our 
friends, be with ourselves. Go with each of us 
to rest ; if any awake, temper to them the dark 
hours of watching ; and when the day returns to 
us — our sun and comforter — call us with morning 
faces, eager to labour, eager to be happy, if hap- 
piness shall be our portion, and, if the day be 
marked to sorrow, strong to endure it. We thank 
thee and praise thee ; and, in the words of Him 
to whom this day is sacred, close our oblation." 

The man who made that kindly human prayer 
knew" the meaning of white heather. And I dare 
to hope that I too have known something of its 
meaning, since that evening when the Mistress of 
the Glen picked the spray and gave it to me on 
the lonely moor. " And now," she said, " you 
will be going home across the sea ; and you have 
been welcome here, but it is time that you should 
go, for there is the place where your real duties 
and troubles and joys are waiting for you. And 
if you have left any misunderstandings behind 
you, you will try to clear them up ; and if there 
have been any quarrels, you will heal them. 
Carry this little flower with you. It's not the 



A HANDFUL OF HEATHER 109 

bonniest blossom in Scotland, but it's the dearest, 
for the message that it brings. And you will re- 
member that love is not getting, but giving; not 
a wild dream of pleasure, and a madness of desire 
—oh no, love is not that— it is goodness, and 
honour, and peace, and pure living— yes, love is 
that; and it is the best thing in the world, and 
the thing that lives longest. And that is what I 
am wishing for you and yours with this bit of 
white heather." 



THE RISTIGOUCHE FROM A 
HORSE-YACHT 



1 Dr. Paley was ardently attached to this amusement; so 
much so, that when t/ie Bis/iop of Durham inquired of 
him when one of his most important works would be 

finished, he said, with great simplicity and good humour, 
'My Lord, I shall work steadily at it when the fly-fish- 
ing season is over.' " — Sir Humphry Davy : Salmonia. 



THE RISTIGOUCHE FROM A 
HORSE-YACHT 




H E boundary line between the provinces 
of Quebec and New Brunswick, for a 
considerable part of its course, resem- 
bles the name of the poet Keats ; it is 
" writ in water." But like his fame, it is water 
that never fails, — the limpid current of the river 
Ristigouche. 

The railway crawls over it on a long bridge at 
Metapedia, and passengers are dropped in the 
darkness somewhere between midnight and dawn. 
When you open your green window-shutters the 
next morning, you see that the village is a discon- 
solate hamlet, scattered along the track as if it had 
been shaken by chance from an open freight-car ; it 
consists of twenty houses, three shops, and a dis- 
couraged church perched upon a little hillock like 
a solitary mourner on the anxious seat. The one 
comfortable and prosperous feature in the coun- 
tenance of Metapedia is the house of the Risti- 



ii4 LITTLE RIVERS 

gouche Salmon Club— an old-fashioned mansion, 
with broad, white piazza, looking over rich 
meadow-lands. Here it was that I found my 
friend Favonius, president of solemn societies, 
pillar of church and state, ingenuously arrayed in 
gray knickerbockers, a flannel shirt, and a soft 
hat, waiting to take me on his horse-yacht for a 
voyage up the river. 

Have you ever seen a horse-yacht? Sometimes 
it is called a scow; but that sounds common. 
Sometimes it is called a house-boat ; but that is 
too English. What does it profit a man to have 
a whole dictionary full of language at his service, 
unless he can invent a new and suggestive name 
for his friend's pleasure-craft ? The foundation of 
the horse-yacht — if a thing that floats may be 
called fundamental — is a flat-bottomed boat, some 
fifty feet long and ten feet wide, with a draft of 
about eight inches. The deck is open for fifteen 
feet aft of the place where the bowsprit ought to 
be; behind that it is completely covered by a 
house, cabin, cottage, or whatever you choose to 
call it, with straight sides and a peaked roof of a 
very early Gothic pattern. Looking in at the 
door, you see, first of all, two cots, one on either 
side of the passage ; then an open space with a 
dining-table, a stove, and some chairs; beyond 
that a pantry with shelves, and a great chest for 
provisions. A door at the back opens into the 
kitchen, and from that another door opens into a 



RISTIGOUCHE 115 

sleeping-room for the boatmen. A huge wooden 
tiller curves over the stern of the boat, and the 
helmsman stands upon the kitchen roof. Two 
canoes are floating behind, holding back, at the 
end of their long tow-ropes, as if reluctant to fol- 
low so clumsy a leader. This is an accurate and 
duly attested description of the horse-yacht. If 
necessary it could be sworn to before a notary 
public. But I am perfectly sure that you might 
read this through without skipping a word, and 
if you had never seen the creature with your own 
eyes, you would have no idea how absurd it looks 
and how comfortable it is. 

While we were stowing away our trunks and 
bags under the cots, and making an equitable di- 
vision of the hooks upon the walls, the motive 
power of the yacht stood patiently upon the shore, 
stamping a hoof now and then, or shaking a 
shaggy head in mild protest against the flies. 
Three more pessimistic-looking horses I never 
saw. They were harnessed abreast, and fastened 
by a prodigious tow-rope to a short post in the 
middle of the forward deck. Their driver was a 
truculent, brigandish, bearded old fellow in long 
boots, a blue flannel shirt, and a black sombrero. 
He sat upon the middle horse, and some wild in- 
stinct of colour had made him tie a big red hand- 
kerchief around his shoulders, so that the eye of 
the beholder took delight in him. He posed like 
a bold, bad robber-chief. But in point of fact I 



n6 LITTLE RIVERS 

believe he was the mildest and most inoffensive 
of men. We never heard him say anything, ex- 
cept at a distance to his horses, and we did not 
inquire what that was. 

Well, as I have said, we were haggling cour- 
teously over those hooks in the cabin, when the 
boat gave a lurch. The bow swung out into the 
stream. There was a scrambling and clattering 
of iron horse-shoes on the rough shingle of the 
bank; and when we looked out of doors, our 
house was moving up the river with the boat under 
it. 

The Ristigouche is a noble stream, stately and 
swift and strong. It rises among the dense for- 
ests in the northern part of New Brunswick — a 
moist upland region, of never-failing springs and 
innumerous lakes — and pours a flood of clear, 
cold water one hundred and fifty miles northward 
and eastward through the hills into the head of 
the Bay of Chaleurs. There are no falls in its 
course, but rapids everywhere. It is steadfast 
but not impetuous, quick but not turbulent, res- 
olute and eager in its desire to get to the sea, like 
the life of a man who has a purpose 

"Too great for haste, too high for rivalry." 

The wonder is where all the water comes from. 
But the river is fed by more than six thousand 
square miles of territory. From both sides the 
little brooks come dashing in with their supply. 



RISTIGOUCHE n 7 

At intervals a larger stream, reaching away back 
among the mountains like a hand with many 
fingers to gather 

" The filtered tribute of the rough woodland," 

delivers its generous offering to the main current. 
And this also is like a human life, which receives 
wealth and power from hidden sources in other 
lives, and is fed abundantly from the past in order 
that it may feed the future. 

The names of the chief tributaries of the Risti- 
gouche are curious. There is the headstrong 
Metapedia, and the crooked Upsalquitch, and the 
Patapedia, and the Quatawamkedgwick. These 
are words at which the tongue balks at first, but 
you soon grow used to them and learn to take 
anything of five syllables with a rush, as a hunter 
takes a five-barred gate, trusting to fortune that 
you will come down with the accent in the right 
place. 

For six or seven miles above Metapedia the 
river has a breadth of about two hundred yards, 
and the valley slopes back rather gently to the 
mountains on either side. There is a good deal 
of cultivated land, and scattered farm-houses ap- 
pear. The soil is excellent. But it is like a pearl 
cast before an obstinate, unfriendly climate. Late 
frosts prolong the winter. Early frosts curtail 
the summer. The only safe crops are grass, oats, 
and potatoes. And for half the year all the cattle 



n8 LITTLE RIVERS 

must be housed and fed to keep them alive. This 
lends a melancholy aspect to agriculture. Most 
of the farmers look as if they had never seen 
better days. With few exceptions, they are what 
a New-Englander would call "slack-twisted and 
shiftless." Their barns are pervious to the 
weather, and their fences fail to connect. Sleds 
and ploughs rust together beside the house, and 
chickens scratch up the front-door yard. In 
truth, the people have been somewhat demoral- 
ized by the conflicting claims of different occupa- 
tions ; hunting in the fall, lumbering in the winter 
and spring, and working for the American sports- 
men in the brief angling season, are so much more 
attractive and offer so much larger returns of ready 
money, that the tedious toil of farming is neg- 
lected. But for all that, in the bright days of 
midsummer these green fields sloping down to 
the water, and pastures high up among the trees 
on the hillsides, look pleasant from a distance and 
give an inhabited air to the landscape. 

At the mouth of the Upsalquitch we passed the 
first of the fishing-lodges. It belongs to a sage 
angler from Albany who saw the beauty of the 
situation years ago, and built a habitation to match 
it. Since that time a number of gentlemen have 
bought land fronting on good pools, and put up 
little cottages of a less classical style than Charles 
Cotton's " Fisherman's Retreat " on the banks of 
the river Dove, but better suited to this wild 



RISTIGOUCHE 119 

scenery, and more convenient to live in. The 
prevailing pattern is a very simple one ; it consists 
of a broad piazza with a small house in the middle 
of it. The house bears about the same propor- 
tion to the piazza that the crown of a Gainsbor- 
ough hat does to the brim. And the cost of the 
edifice is to the cost of the land, as the first price 
of a share in a bankrupt railway is to the assess- 
ments which follow the reorganization. All the 
best points have been sold, and real estate on the 
Ristigouche has been bid up to an absurd figure. 
In fact, the river is over-populated and probably 
over- fished. But we could hardly find it in our 
hearts to regret this, for it made the upward trip 
a very sociable one. At every lodge that was 
open Favonius (who knows everybody) had a 
friend, and we must slip ashore in a canoe to leave 
the mail and refresh the inner man. 

An angler, like an Arab, regards hospitality as 
a religious duty. There seems to be something 
in the craft which inclines the heart to kindness 
and good fellowship. Few anglers have I seen 
who were not pleasant to meet, and ready to do a 
good turn to a fellow-fisherman with the gift of a 
killing fly or the loan of a rod. Not their own 
particular and well-proved favourite, of course, for 
that is a treasure which no decent man would 
borrow ; but, with that exception, the best in their 
store is at the service of an accredited brother. 
One of the Ristigouche proprietors I remember, 



120 LITTLE RIVERS 

whose name bespoke him a descendant of Cale- 
donia's patron saint. He was fishing in front of 
his own door when we came up, with our splash- 
ing horses, through the pool ; but nothing would 
do but he must up anchor and have us away with 
him into the house to taste his good cheer. And 
there were his daughters with their books and 
needlework, and the photographs which they had 
taken pinned up on the wooden walls, among 
Japanese fans and bits of bright-coloured stuff in 
which the soul of woman delights, and, in a pas- 
sive, silent way, the soul of man also. Then, 
after we had discussed the year's fishing, and the 
mysteries of the camera, and the deep question of 
what makes some negatives too thin and others 
too thick, we must go out to see the big salmon 
which one of the ladies had caught a few days 
before, and the large trout swimming about in 
their cold spring. It seemed to me, as we went 
on our way, that there could hardly be a more 
wholesome and pleasant summer life for well-bred 
young women than this, or two amusements more 
innocent and sensible than photography and fly- 
fishing. 

It must be confessed that the horse-yacht as a 
vehicle of travel is not remarkable in point of 
speed. Three miles an hour is not a very rapid 
rate of motion. But then, if you are not in a 
hurry, why should you care to make haste? 

The wild desire to be forever racing against old 



RISTIGOUCHE 121 

Father Time is one of the kill-joys of modern life. 
That ancient traveller is sure to beat you in the 
long run, and as long as you are trying to rival 
him he will make your life a burden. But if 
you will only acknowledge his superiority and 
profess that you do not approve of racing after all, 
he will settle down quietly beside you and jog 
along like the most companionable of creatures. 
It is a pleasant pilgrimage in which the journey 
itself is part of the destination. 

As soon as one learns to regard the horse-yacht 
as a sort of moving home, it appears admirable. 
There is no dust or smoke, no rumble of wheels, 
or shriek of whistles. You are gliding along 
steadily through an evergreen world ; skirting the 
silent hills ; passing from one side of the river to 
the other when the horses have to swim the cur- 
rent to find a good foothold on the bank. You 
are on the water, but not at its mercy, for your 
craft is not disturbed by the heaving of rude waves, 
and the serene inhabitants do not say, "lam 
sick." There is room enough to move about 
without falling overboard. You may sleep, or 
read, or write in your cabin, or sit upon the float- 
ing piazza in an arm-chair and smoke the pipe of 
peace, while the cool breeze blows in your face 
and the musical waves go singing down to the 
sea. 

There was one feature about the boat which 
commended itself very strongly to my mind. It 



122 LITTLE RIVERS 

was possible to stand upon the forward deck and 
do a little trout-fishing in motion. By watching 
your chance, when the corner of a good pool was 
within easy reach, you could send out a hasty line 
and cajole a sea-trout from his hiding-place. It 
is true that the tow-ropes and the post made the 
back cast a little awkward; and the wind some- 
times blew the flies up on the roof of the cabin ; 
but then, with patience and a short line the thing 
could be done. I remember a pair of good trout 
that rose together just as we were going through 
a boiling rapid ; and it tried the strength of my 
split-bamboo rod to bring those fish to the net 
against the current and the motion of the boat. 

When nightfall approached we let go the anchor 
(to wit, a rope tied to a large stone on the shore), 
ate our dinner " with gladness and singleness of 
heart," like the early Christians, and slept the 
sleep of the just, lulled by the murmuring of the 
waters, and defended from the insidious attacks 
of the mosquito by the breeze blowing down the 
river and the impregnable curtains over the beds. 
At daybreak, long before Favonius and I had 
finished our dreams, we were under way again ; 
and when the trampling of the horses on some 
rocky shore wakened us, we could see the steep 
hills gliding past theVindows and hear the rapids 
dashing against the side of the boat, and it seemed 
as if we were still dreaming. 

At Cross Point, where the river makes a long 



RISTIGOUCHE 123 

loop around a narrow mountain, thin as a saw and 
crowned on its jagged edge by a rude wooden 
cross, we stopped for an hour to try the fishing. 
It was here that I hooked two mysterious crea- 
tures, each of which took the fly when it was 
below the surface, pulled for a few moments in a 
sullen way, and then apparently melted into noth- 
ingness. It will always be a source of regret to 
me that the nature of these animals must remain 
unknown. While they were on the line it was the 
general opinion that they were heavy trout ; but 
no sooner had they departed than I became firmly 
convinced, in accordance with a psychological law 
which holds good all over the world, that they 
were both enormous salmon. Even the Turks 
have a proverb which says, " Every fish that 
escapes appears larger than it is." No one can 
alter that conviction, because no one can logically 
refute it. Our best blessings, like our largest fish, 
always depart before we have time to measure 
them. 

The Slide Pool is in the wildest and most pic- 
turesque part of the river, about thirty-five miles 
above Metapedia. The stream, flowing swiftly 
down a stretch of rapids between forest-clad hills, 
runs straight toward the base of an eminence so 
precipitous that the trees can hardly find a foot- 
hold upon it, and seem to be climbing up in haste 
on either side of the long slide which leads to the 
summit. The current, barred by the wall of rock, 



i2 4 LITTLE RIVERS 

takes a great sweep to the right, dashing up at 
first in angry waves, then falling away in oily 
curves and eddies, until at last it sleeps in a black 
deep, apparently almost motionless, at the foot of 
the hill. It was here, on the upper edge of the 
stream, opposite to the slide, that we brought our 
floating camp to anchor for some days. What 
does one do in such a watering-place? 

Let us take a " specimen day." It is early 
morning, or, to be more precise, about eight of 
the clock, and the white fog is just beginning to 
curl and drift away from the surface of the river. 
Sooner than this it would be idle to go out. The 
preternaturally early bird in his greedy haste may 
catch the worm ; but the fly is never taken until 
the fog has lifted ; and in this the scientific angler 
sees, with gratitude, a remarkable adaptation of 
the laws of nature to the tastes of man. The 
canoes are waiting at the front door. We step 
into them and push off, Favonius going up the 
stream a couple of miles to the mouth of the Pat- 
apedia, and I down, a little shorter distance, to 
the famous Indian House Pool. The slim boat 
glides easily on the current, with a smooth, buoy- 
ant motion, quickened by the strokes of the pad- 
dles in the bow and the stern. We pass around 
two curves in the river and find ourselves at the 
head of the pool. Here the man in the stern 
drops the anchor, just on the edge of the bar 
where the rapid breaks over into the deeper water. 



RISTIGOUCHE 125 

The long rod is lifted ; the fly unhooked from the 
reel ; a few feet of line pulled through the rings, 
and the fishing begins. 

First cast, — to the right, straight across the 
stream, about twenty feet : the current carries the 
fly down with a semicircular sweep, until it comes 
in line with the bow of the canoe. Second cast, — 
to the left, straight across the stream, with the 
same motion : the semicircle is completed, and the 
fly hangs quivering for a few seconds at the lowest 
point of the arc. Three or four feet of line are 
drawn from the reel. Third cast to the right ; 
fourth cast to the left. Then a little more line. 
And so, with widening half-circles, the water is 
covered, gradually and very carefully, until at 
length the angler has as much line out as his two- 
handed rod can lift and swing. Then the first 
" drop " is finished; the man in the stern quietly 
pulls up the anchor and lets the boat drift down a 
few yards ; the same process is repeated on the 
second drop ; and so on, until the end of the run 
is reached and the fly has passed over all the good 
water. This seems like a very regular and some- 
what mechanical proceeding as one describes it, 
but in the performance it is rendered intensely 
interesting by the knowledge that at any moment 
it is liable to be interrupted. 

This morning the interruption comes early. 
At the first cast of the second drop, before the fly 
has fairly lit, a great flash of silver darts from the 



i 2 6 LITTLE RIVERS 

waves close by the boat. Usually a salmon takes 
the fly rather slowly, carrying it under water 
before he seizes it in his mouth. But this one is 
in no mood for deliberation. He has hooked 
himself with a rush, and the line goes whirring 
madly from the reel as he races down the pool. 
Keep the point of the rod low ; he must have his 
own way now. Up with the anchor quickly, and 
send the canoe after him, bowman and sternman 
paddling with swift strokes. He has reached the 
deepest water ; he stops to think what has hap- 
pened to him ; we have passed around and below 
him; and now, with the current to help us, we 
can begin to reel in. Lift the point of the rod, 
with a strong, steady pull. Put the force of both 
arms into it. The tough wood will stand the 
strain. The fish must be moved ; he must come 
to the boat if he is ever to be landed. He gives 
a little and yields slowly to the pressure. Then 
suddenly he gives too much, and runs straight 
toward us. Reel in now as swiftly as possible, 
or else he will get a slack on the line and escape. 
Now he stops, shakes his head from side to side, 
and darts away again across the pool, leaping high 
out of the water. Drop the point of the rod quickly, 
for if he falls on the leader he will surely break it. 
Another leap, and another ! Truly he is "a. 
merry one," as Sir Humphry Davy says, and it 
will go hard with us to hold him. But those 
great leaps have exhausted his strength, and now 



RISTIGOUCHE 127 

he follows the line more easily. The men push 
the boat back to the shallow side of the pool until 
it touches lightly on the shore. The fish comes 
slowly in, fighting a little and making a few short 
runs ; he is tired and turns slightly on his side ; 
but even yet he is a heavy weight on the line, and 
it seems a wonder that so slight a thing as the 
casting-line can guide and draw him. Now he is 
close to the boat. The boatman steps out on a rock 
with his gaff. Steadily now and slowly, lift the 
rod, bending it backward. A quick, sure stroke 
of the steel! a great splash! and the salmon is 
lifted upon the shore. How he flounces about 
on the stones ! Give him the coup de grace at 
once, for his own sake as well as for ours. And 
now look at him, as he lies there on the green 
leaves. Broad back; small head tapering to a 
point ; clean, shining sides with a few black spots 
on them ; it is a fish fresh-run from the sea, in 
perfect condition, and that is the reason why he 
has given such good sport. 

We must try for another before we go back. 
Again fortune favours us, and at eleven o'clock 
we pole up the river to the camp with two good 
salmon in the canoe. Hardly have we laid them 
away in the ice-box, when Favonius comes drop- 
ping down from Patapedia with three fish, one of 
them a twenty-four-pounder. And so the morn- 
ing's work is done. 

In the evening, after dinner, it was our custom 



128 LITTLE RIVERS 

to sit out on the deck, watching the moonlight as 
it fell softly over the black hills and changed the 
river into a pale flood of rolling gold. The fra- 
grant wreaths of smoke floated lazily away on the 
faint breeze of night. There was no sound save 
the rushing of the water and the crackling of the 
camp-fire on the shore. We talked of many 
things in the heavens above, and in the earth be- 
neath, and in the waters under the earth ; touch- 
ing lightly here and there as the spirit of vagrant 
converse led us. Favonius has the good sense 
to talk about himself occasionally and tell his own 
experience. The man who will not do that must 
always be a dull companion. Modest egoism is 
the salt of conversation: you do not want too 
much of it ; but if it is altogether omitted, every- 
thing tastes flat. I remember well the evening 
when he told me the story of the Sheep of the 
Wilderness. 

" I was ill that summer," said he, "and the 
doctor had ordered me to go into the woods, but 
on no account to go without plenty of fresh meat, 
which was essential to my recovery. So we set 
out into the wild country north of Georgian Bay, 
taking a live sheep with us in order to be sure 
that the doctor's prescription might be faithfully 
followed. It was a young and innocent little 
beast, curling itself up at my feet in the canoe, 
and following me about on shore like a dog. I 
gathered grass every day to feed it, and carried 



RISTIGOUCHE 129 

it in my arms over the rough portages. It ate 
out of my hand and rubbed its woolly head against 
my leggins. To my dismay, I found that I was 
beginning to love it for its own sake and without 
any ulterior motives. The thought of killing and 
eating it became more and more painful to me, 
until at length the fatal fascination was complete, 
and my trip became practically an exercise of 
devotion to that sheep. I carried it everywhere 
and ministered fondly to its wants. Not for the 
world would I have alluded to mutton in its pres- 
ence. And when we returned to civilization I 
parted from the creature with sincere regret and 
the consciousness that I had humoured my affec- 
tions at the expense of my digestion. The sheep 
did not give me so much as a look of farewell, but 
fell to feeding on the grass beside the farm-house 
with an air of placid triumph." 

After hearing this touching tale, I was glad 
that no great intimacy had sprung up between 
Favonius and the chickens which we carried in a 
coop on the forecastle-head, for there is no tell- 
ing what restrictions his tender-heartedness might 
have laid upon our larder. But perhaps a chicken 
would not have given such an opening for mis- 
placed affection as a sheep. There is a great 
difference in animals in this respect. I certainly 
never heard of any one falling in love with a sal- 
mon in such a way as to regard it as a fond com- 
panion. And this may be one reason why no 



i 3 o LITTLE RIVERS 

sensible person who has tried fishing has ever 
been able to see any cruelty in it. 

Suppose the fish is not caught by an angler, 
what is his probable fate? He will either perish 
miserably in the struggles of the crowded net, or 
die of old age and starvation like the long, lean 
stragglers which are sometimes found in the shal- 
low pools, or be devoured by a larger fish, or torn 
to pieces by a seal or an otter. Compared with 
any of these miserable deaths, the fate of a salmon 
who is hooked in a clear stream, and after a glo- 
rious fight receives the happy dispatch at the mo- 
ment when he touches the shore, is a sort of 
euthanasia. And, since the fish was made to be 
man's food, the angler who brings him to the table 
of destiny in the cleanest, quickest, kindest way 
is, in fact, his benefactor. 

There were some days, however, when our be- 
nevolent intentions toward the salmon were frus- 
trated ; mornings when they refused to rise, and 
evenings when they escaped even the skilful en- 
deavours of Favonius. In vain did he try every 
fly in his book, from the smallest " Silver Doctor " 
to the largest " Golden Eagle." The " Black 
Dose" would not move them. The "Durham 
Ranger " covered the pool in vain. On days like 
this, if a stray fish rose, it was hard to land him, 
for he was usually but slightly hooked. 

I remember one of these shy creatures which 
led me a pretty dance at the mouth of Patapedia. 



RISTIGOUCHE 131 

He came to the fly just at dusk, rising very softly 
and quietly, as if he did not really care for it, but 
only wanted to see what it was like. He went 
down at once into deep water, and began the most 
dangerous and exasperating of all salmon tactics, 
moving around in slow circles and shaking his 
head from side to side with sullen pertinacity. 
This is called " jigging," and unless it can be 
stopped the result is fatal. 

I could not stop it. That salmon was deter- 
mined to jig. He knew more than I did. 

The canoe followed him down the pool. He 
jigged away past all three of the inlets of the 
Patapedia, and at last, in the still, deep water 
below, after we had laboured with him for half an 
hour, and brought him near enough to see that he 
was immense, he calmly opened his mouth, and 
the fly came back to me void. That was a sad 
evening, in which all the consolations of philoso- 
phy were needed. 

Sunday was a very peaceful day in our camp. 
In the Dominion of Canada the question "to fish 
or not to fish " on the first day of the week is not 
left to the frailty of the individual conscience. 
The law on the subject is quite explicit, and says 
that between six o'clock on Saturday evening and 
six o'clock on Monday morning all nets shall be 
taken up and no one shall wet a line. The Risti- 
gouche Salmon Club has its guardians stationed 
all along the river, and they are quite as inflexi- 



i 3 2 LITTLE RIVERS 

ble in seeing that their employers keep this law as 
the famous sentinel was in refusing to let Napo- 
leon pass without the countersign. But I do not 
think that these keen sportsmen regard it as a 
hardship; they are quite willing that the fish 
should have "an off day" in every week, and 
only grumble because some of the net-owners 
down at the mouth of the river have brought po- 
litical influence to bear in their favour and obtained 
exemption from the rule. For our part, we were 
nothing loath to hang up our rods, and make the 
day different from other days. 

In the morning we had a service in the cabin 
of the boat, gathering a little congregation of 
guardians and boatmen and people from a sol- 
itary farm-house by the river. They came in 
pirogues, —long, narrow boats hollowed from the 
trunk of a tree, — the black-eyed, brown-faced 
girls sitting back to back in the middle of the boat, 
and the men standing up at bow and stern to pole 
the tottlish craft along. It seemed a picturesque 
way of travelling, although none too safe. 

In the afternoon we sat on deck and looked at 
the water. What a charm there is in watching 
a swift stream! The eye never wearies of fol- 
lowing its curls and eddies, the shadow of the 
waves dancing over the stones, the strange, crink- 
ling lines of sunlight in the shallows. There is a 
sort of fascination in it, lulling and soothing the 
mind into a quietude which is even pleasanter 



RISTIGOUCHE 133 

than sleep, and making it almost possible to do 
that of which we so often speak, but which we 
never quite accomplish — " think about nothing." 
Out on the edge of the pool we could see five or 
six huge salmon, moving slowly from side to side, 
or lying motionless like gray shadows. There 
was nothing to break the silence except the thin, 
clear whistle of the white-throated sparrow far 
back in the woods. This is almost the only bird- 
song that one hears on the river, unless you count 
the metallic " chr-r-r-r" of the kingfisher as a 
song. 

Every now and then one of the salmon in 
the pool would lazily roll out of water, or spring 
high into the air and fall back with a heavy splash. 
What is it that makes salmon leap? Is it pain or 
pleasure? Do they do it to escape the attack of 
another fish, or to shake off a parasite that clings 
to them, or to practise jumping so that they can 
ascend the falls when they reach them, or simply 
and solely out of exuberant gladness and joy of 
living? Any one of these reasons would be 
enough to account for it on week-days. On Sun- 
day I am quite sure they do it for the temptation 
of the fisherman. 

But how should I tell all the little incidents 
which made that lazy voyage so delightful? Fa- 
vonius was the ideal host, for on water, as well 
as on land, he knows how to provide for the lib- 
erty as well as for the wants of his guests. He 



i 3 4 LITTLE RIVERS 

understands also the fine art of conversation, 
which consists of silence as well as speech. And 
when it conies to angling, Izaak Walton himself 
could not have been a more profitable teacher by 
precept or example. Indeed, it is a curious 
thought, and one full of sadness to a well-consti- 
tuted mind, that on the Ristigouche "I. W." 
would have been at sea, for the beloved father of 
all fishermen passed through this world without 
ever catching a salmon. So ill does fortune match 
with merit here below. 

At last the days of idleness were ended. We 
could not 

" Fold our tents like the Arabs, 
And as silently steal away"; 

but we took down the long rods, put away the 
heavy reels, made the canoes fast to the side of 
the house, embarked the three horses on the front 
deck, and then dropped down with the current, 
swinging along through the rapids, and drifting 
slowly through the still places, now grounding on 
a hidden rock, and now sweeping around a sharp 
curve, until at length we saw the roofs of Meta- 
pedia and the ugly bridge of the railway spanning 
the river. There we left our floating house, awk- 
ward and helpless, like some strange relic of the 
flood, stranded on the shore. And as we climbed 
the bank we looked back and wondered whether 
Noah was sorry when he said good-bye to his ark. 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S 
MILK 



: Nay, let me tell you, there be many that have forty tunes 
our estates, that would give the greatest part of it to be 
healthful and cheerful like us; who, with the expense of 
a little money, have ate, and drank, and laughed, and 
angled, and sung, and slept securely; and rose next day, 
and cast away care, and sung, and laughed, and angled 
again; which are blessings rich men cannot purchase 
with all their money." — Izaak Walton: The Complete 
Angler. 





ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S 
MILK 



GREAT deal of the pleasure of life 
lies in bringing together things which 
have no connection. That is the se- 
cret of humour,— at least so we are 
told by the philosophers who explain the jests 
that other men have made, — and in regard to 
travel, I am quite sure that it must be illogical 
in order to be entertaining. The more contrasts 
it contains, the better. 

Perhaps it was some philosophical reflection of 
this kind that brought me to the resolution, on a 
certain summer day, to make a little journey, as 
straight as possible, from the sea-level streets of 
Venice to the lonely, lofty summit of a Tyrolese 
mountain, called, for no earthly reason that I can 
discover, the Gross-Venediger. 

But apart from the philosophy of the matter, 
which I must confess to passing over very super- 
ficially at the time, there were other and more 



i 3 8 LITTLE RIVERS 

cogent reasons for wanting to go from Venice to 
the Big Venetian. It was the ist of July, and 
the city on the sea was becoming tepid. A slum- 
brous haze brooded over canals and palaces and 
churches. It was difficult to keep one's con- 
science awake to Baedeker and a sense of moral 
obligation ; Ruskin was impossible, and a picture- 
gallery was a penance. We floated lazily from 
one place to another, and decided that, after all, 
it was too warm to go in. The cries of the gon- 
doliers, at the canal corners, grew more and more 
monotonous and dreamy. There was danger of 
our falling fast asleep and having to pay by the 
hour for a day's repose in a gondola. If it grew 
much warmer, we might be compelled to stay un- 
til the following winter in order to recover energy 
enough to get away. All the signs of the times 
pointed northward, to the mountains, where we 
should see glaciers and snow-fields, and pick Al- 
penrosen, and drink goat's milk fresh from the 
real goat. 

I 

The first stage on the journey thither was by 
rail to Belluno— about four or five hours. It is 
a sufficient commentary on railway travel that 
the most important thing about it is to tell how 
many hours it takes to get from one place to 
another. 

We arrived in Belluno at night, and when we 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 139 

awoke the next morning we found ourselves in a 
picturesque little city of Venetian aspect, with a 
piazza and a campanile and a Palladian cathedral, 
surrounded on all sides by lofty hills. We were 
at the end of the railway and at the beginning of 
the Dolomites. 

Although I have a constitutional aversion to 
scientific information given by unscientific per- 
sons, such as clergymen and men of letters, I 
must go in that direction far enough to make it 
clear that the word " Dolomite " does not describe 
a kind of fossil, nor a sect of heretics, but a forma- 
tion of mountains lying between the Alps and the 
Adriatic. Draw a diamond on the map, with 
Brixen at the northwest corner, Lienz at the 
northeast, Belluno at the southeast, and Trent at 
the southwest, and you will have included the re- 
gion of the Dolomites, a country so picturesque, 
so interesting, so full of sublime and beautiful 
scenery, that it is equally a wonder and a bless- 
ing that it has not been long since completely 
overrun by tourists and ruined with railways. It 
is true, the glaciers and snow-fields are limited ; 
the waterfalls are comparatively few and slender, 
and the rivers small ; the loftiest peaks are little 
more than ten thousand feet high. But, on the 
other hand, the mountains are always near, and 
therefore always imposing. Bold, steep, fantastic 
masses of naked rock, they rise suddenly from 
the green and flowery valleys in amazing and end- 



140 LITTLE RIVERS 

less contrast ; they mirror themselves in the tiny 
mountain-lakes like pictures in a dream. 

I believe the guide-book says that they are 
formed of carbonate of lime and carbonate of mag- 
nesia in chemical composition; but even if this 
be true, it need not prejudice any candid observer 
against them. For the simple and fortunate fact 
is that they are built of such stone that wind and 
weather, keen frost and melting snow and rush- 
ing water have worn and cut and carved them into 
a thousand shapes of wonder and beauty. It 
needs but little fancy to see in them walls and 
towers, cathedrals and campaniles, fortresses and 
cities, tinged with many hues from pale gray to 
deep red, and shining in an air so soft, so pure, 
so cool, so fragrant, under a sky so deep and blue 
and a sunshine so genial, that it seems like the 
happy union of Switzerland and Italy. 

The great highway through this region from 
south to north is the Ampezzo road, which was 
constructed in 1830, along the valleys of the Piave, 
the Boite, and the Rienz— the ancient line of 
travel and commerce between Venice and Inns- 
bruck. The road is superbly built, smooth and 
level. Our carriage rolled along so easily that 
we forgot and forgave its venerable appearance 
and its lack of accommodation for trunks. We 
had been persuaded to take four horses, as our 
luggage seemed too formidable for a single pair. 
But in effect our concession to apparent neces- 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 141 

sity turned out to be a mere display of superflu- 
ous luxury, for the two white leaders did little 
more than show their feeble paces, leaving the 
gray wheelers to do the work. We had the ele- 
vating sense of travelling four-in-hand, however 
— a satisfaction to which I do not believe any 
human being is altogether insensible. 

At Longarone we breakfasted for the second 
time, and entered the narrow gorge of the Piave. 
The road was cut out of the face of the rock. Be- 
low us the long lumber-rafts went shooting down 
the swift river. Above, on the right, were the 
jagged crests of Monte Furlon and Premaggiore, 
which seemed to us very wonderful, because we 
had not yet learned how jagged the Dolomites can 
be. At Perarolo, where the Boite joins the Piave, 
there is a lump of a mountain in the angle be- 
tween the rivers, and around this we crawled in 
long curves until we had risen a thousand feet, 
and arrived at the small Hotel Venezia, where 
we were to dine. 

While dinner was preparing, the Deacon and I 
walked up to Pieve di Cadore, the birthplace of 
Titian. The house in which the great painter 
first saw the colours of the world is still standing, 
and tradition points out the very room in which 
he began to paint. I am not one of those who 
would inquire too closely into such a legend as 
this. The cottage may have been rebuilt a dozen 
times since Titian's day ; not a scrap of the orig- 



i 4 2 LITTLE RIVERS 

inal stone or plaster may remain ; but, beyond a 
doubt, the view that we saw from the window is 
the same that Titian saw. Now, for the first 
time, I could understand and appreciate the land- 
scape-backgrounds of his pictures. The compact 
masses of mountains, the bold, sharp forms, the 
hanging rocks of cold gray emerging from green 
slopes, the intense blue aerial distances — these all 
had seemed to be unreal and imaginary — compo- 
sitions of the studio. But now I knew that, 
whether Titian painted out of doors, like our 
modern impressionists, or not, he certainly 
painted what he had seen, and painted it as it is. 

The graceful brown-eyed boy who showed us 
the house seemed also to belong to one of Ti- 
tian's pictures. As we were going away, the 
Deacon, for lack of copper, rewarded him with a 
little silver piece, a half-lira, in value about ten 
cents. A celestial rapture of surprise spread over 
the child's face, and I know not what blessings 
he invoked upon us. He called his companions 
to rejoice with him, and we left them clapping 
their hands and dancing. 

Driving after one has dined has always a pe- 
culiar charm. The motion seems pleasanter, the 
landscape finer than in the morning hours. The 
road from Cadore ran on a high level, through 
sloping pastures, white villages, and bits of larch 
forest. In its narrow bed, far below, the river 
Boite roared as gently as Bottom's lion. The 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 143 

afternoon sunlight touched the snow-capped pin- 
nacle of Antelao and the massive pink wall of 
Sorapis on the right ; on the left, across the val- 
ley, Monte Pelmo's vast head and the wild crests 
of La Rochetta and Formin rose dark against the 
glowing sky. The peasants lifted their hats as 
we passed, and gave us a pleasant evening greet- 
ing. And so, almost without knowing it, we 
slipped out of Italy into Austria, and drew up 
before a bare, square stone building, with the dou- 
ble black eagle, like a strange fowl split for broil- 
ing, staring at us from the wall, and an inscription 
to the effect that this was the Royal and Imperial 
Austrian Custom-house. 

The officer saluted us so politely that we felt 
quite sorry that his duty required him to disturb 
our luggage. " The law obliged him to open one 
trunk; courtesy forbade him to open more." It 
was quickly done ; and, without having to make 
any contribution to the income of His Royal and 
Imperial Majesty, Francis Joseph, we rolled on 
our way, through the hamlets of Acqua Bona and 
Zuel, into the Ampezzan metropolis of Cortina, 
at sundown. 

The modest inn called " The Star of Gold" 
stood facing the public square, just below the 
church, and the landlady stood facing us in the 
doorway, with an enthusiastic welcome— alto- 
gether a most friendly and entertaining landlady, 
whose one desire in life seemed to be that we should 



i 4 4 LITTLE RIVERS 

never regret having chosen her house instead of 
" The White Cross " or " The Black Eagle." 

" Oh ja! " she had our telegram received; and 
would we look at the rooms?— outlooking on the 
piazza, with a balcony from which we could ob- 
serve the Festa of to-morrow. She hoped they 
would please us. " Only come in ; accommodate 
yourselves." 

It was all as she promised ; three little bed- 
rooms, and a little salon opening on a little bal- 
cony ; queer old oil-paintings and framed embroi- 
deries and tiles hanging on the walls ; spotless 
curtains, and board floors so white that it would 
have been a shame to eat off them without spread- 
ing a cloth to keep them from being soiled. 

" These are the rooms of the Baron Rothschild 
when he comes here always in the summer — with 
nine horses and nine servants — the Baron Roth- 
schild of Vienna." 

I assured her that we did not know the Baron, 
but that should make no difference. We would 
not ask her to reduce the price on account of a 
little thing like that. 

She did not quite grasp this idea, but hoped that 
we would not find the pension too dear at a dol- 
lar and fifty-seven and a half cents a day each, 
with a little extra for the salon and the balcony. 
" The English people all please themselves here 
—there comes many every summer— English 
bishops and their families." 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 145 

I inquired whether there were many bishops 
in the house at the moment. 

" No, just at present— she was very sorry— 
none." 

"Well, then," I said, "it is all right. We 
will take the rooms." 

Good Signora Barbaria, you did not speak the 
American language, nor understand those curious 
perversions of thought which pass among the 
Americans for humour ; but you understood how 
to make a little inn cheerful and homelike ; yours 
was a very simple and agreeable art of keeping a 
hotel. As we sat in the balcony after supper, 
listening to the capital playing of the village or- 
chestra, and the Tyrolese songs with which they 
varied their music, we thought within ourselves 
that we were fortunate to have fallen upon " The 
Star of Gold." 

II 

Cortina lies in its valley like a white shell that 
has rolled down into a broad vase of malachite. 
It has about a hundred houses and seven hundred 
inhabitants, a large church and two small ones, a 
fine stone campanile with excellent bells, and 
seven or eight little inns. But it is more impor- 
tant than its size would signify, for it is the capi- 
tal of the district whose lawful title is Magnified 
Comunita di Ampezzo — a name conferred long 
ago by the Republic of Venice. In the fifteenth 



i 4 6 LITTLE RIVERS 

century it was Venetian territory; but in 15 16, 
under Maximilian I., it was joined to Austria; 
and it is now one of the richest and most pros- 
perous communes of the Tyrol. It embraces 
about thirty-five hundred people, scattered in 
hamlets and clusters of houses through the green 
basin, with its four entrances, lying between the 
peaks of Tofana, Cristallo, Sorapis, and Nuvolau. 
The well-cultivated grain-fields and meadows, the 
smooth alps filled with fine cattle, the well-built 
houses with their white stone basements and bal- 
conies of dark-brown wood and broad overhang- 
ing roofs, all speak of industry and thrift. But 
there is more than mere agricultural prosperity in 
this valley. There is a fine race of men and 
women — intelligent, vigourous, and with a strong 
sense of beauty. The outer walls of the annex 
of the Hotel Aquila Nera are covered with fres- 
coes of marked power and originality, painted by 
the son of the innkeeper. The art-schools of 
Cortina are famous for their beautiful work in 
gold and silver filigree and wood-inlaying. There 
are nearly two hundred pupils in these schools, 
all peasants' children, and they produce results, 
especially in intarsia, which are admirable.- The 
village orchestra, of which I spoke a moment ago, 
is trained and led by a peasant's son, who has 
never had a thorough musical education. It must 
have at least twenty-five members, and as we 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 147 

heard them at the Festa they seemed to play with 
extraordinary accuracy and expression. 

This Festa gave us a fine chance to see the peo- 
ple of the Ampezzo all together. It was the an- 
nual jubilation of the district; and from all the 
outlying hamlets and remote side valleys, even 
from the neighbouring vales of Agordo and Au- 
ronzo, across the mountains, and from Cadore, 
the peasants, men and women and children, had 
come in to the Sagro at Cortina. The piazza — 
which is really nothing more than a broadening 
of the road behind the church— was quite 
thronged. There must have been between two 
and three thousand people. 

The ceremonies of the day began with general 
church-going. The people here are honestly and 
naturally religious. I have seen so many exam- 
ples of what can only be called " sincere and un- 
affected piety" that I cannot doubt it. The 
church, on Cortina' s feast-day, was crowded to 
the doors with worshippers, who gave every evi- 
dence of taking part not only with the voice, but 
also with the heart, in the worship. 

Then followed the public unveiling of a tablet, 
on the wall of the little " Inn of the Anchor," to 
the memory of Giammaria Ghedini, the founder of 
the art-schools of Cortina. There was music by 
the band ; and an oration by a native Demosthe- 
nes (who spoke in Italian so fluent that it ran 



148 LITTLE RIVERS 

through one's senses like water through a sluice, 
leaving nothing behind), and an original "Canto," 
sung by the village choir, with a general chorus, 
in which they called upon the various mountains 
to " reecho the name of the beloved master John- 
Mary as a model of modesty and true merit," and 
wound up with — 

" Hurrah for John-Mary ! Hurrah for his art ! 
Hurrah for all teachers as skilful as he ! 
Hurrah for us all, who have now taken part 
In singing together in do, re, mi." 

It was very primitive, and I do not suppose 
that the celebration was even mentioned in the 
newspapers of the great world ; but, after all, has 
not the man who wins such a triumph as this in 
the hearts of his own people, for whom he has 
made labour beautiful with the charm of art, de- 
served better of fame than many a crowned mon- 
arch or conquering warrior ? We should be wiser 
if we gave less glory to the men who have been 
successful in forcing their fellow-men to die, and 
more glory to the men who have been successful 
in teaching their fellow-men how to live. 

But the Festa of Cortina did not remain all day 
on this high moral plane. In the afternoon came 
what our landlady called " allerlei Dummheiten." 
There was a grand lottery for the benefit of the 
Volunteer Fire Department. The high officials 
sat up in a green wooden booth in the middle of 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 149 

the square, and called out the numbers and dis- 
tributed the prizes. Then there was a greased 
pole with various articles of an attractive charac- 
ter tied to a large hoop at the top — silk aprons and 
a green jacket, and bottles of wine, and half a 
smoked pig, and a coil of rope, and a purse. The 
gallant firemen voluntarily climbed up the pole 
as far as they could, one after another, and then 
involuntarily slid down again exhausted, each one 
wiping off a little more of the grease, until at last 
the lucky one came who profited by his forerun- 
ners' labours, and struggled to the top to snatch 
the smoked pig. After that it was easy. 

Such is success in this unequal world ; the man 
who wipes off the grease seldom gets the prize. 

Then followed various games with tubs of wa- 
ter ; and coins fastened to the bottom of a huge 
black frying-pan, to be plucked off with the lips ; 
and pots of flour to be broken with sticks ; so that 
the young lads of the village were ducked and 
blackened and powdered to an unlimited extent, 
amid the hilarious applause of the spectators. In 
the evening there was more music, and the peas- 
ants danced in the square, the women quietly and 
rather heavily, but the men with amazing agility, 
slapping the soles of their shoes with their hands, 
or turning cart-wheels in front of their partners. 
At dark the festivities closed with a display of 
fireworks ; there were rockets and bombs and pin- 
wheels ; and the boys had tiny red and blue lights 



ISO LITTLE RIVERS 

which they held until their fingers were burned, 
just as boys do in America ; and there was a gen- 
eral hush of wonder as a particularly brilliant 
rocket swished into the dark sky ; and when it 
burst into a rain of serpents, the crowd breathed 
out its delight in a long-drawn " Ah-h-h-h! " just 
as the crowd does everywhere. We might easily 
have imagined ourselves at a Fourth of July cele- 
bration in Vermont, if it had not been for the cos- 
tumes. 

The men of the Ampezzo Valley have kept 
but little that is peculiar in their dress. Men 
are naturally more progressive than women, and 
therefore less picturesque. The tide of fashion 
has swept them into the international monotony 
of coat and vest and trousers — pretty much the 
same, and equally ugly, all over the world. Now 
and then you may see a short jacket with silver 
buttons, or a pair of knee-breeches ; and almost 
all the youths wear a bunch of feathers or a tuft 
of chamois' hair in their soft green hats. But 
the women of the Ampezzo — strong, comely, with 
golden-brown complexions, and often noble faces 
— are not ashamed to dress as their grandmothers 
did. They wear a little round black felt hat with 
rolled rim and two long ribbons hanging down at 
the back. Their hair is carefully braided and 
coiled, and stuck through and through with great 
silver pins. A black bodice, fastened with silver 
clasps, is covered in front with the ends of a bril- 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 151 

liant silk kerchief, laid in many folds around the 
shoulders. The white shirt-sleeves are very full 
and fastened up above the elbow with coloured 
ribbon. If the weather is cool, the women wear 
a short black jacket, with satin yoke and high 
puffed sleeves. But, whatever the weather may 
be, they make no change in the large, full dark 
skirts, almost completely covered with immense 
silk aprons, by preference light blue. It is not a 
remarkably brilliant dress, compared with that 
which one may still see in some districts of Nor- 
way or Sweden, but upon the whole it suits the 
women of the Ampezzo wonderfully. 

For my part, I think that when a woman has 
found a dress that becomes her, it is a waste of 
time to send to Paris for a fashion-plate. 



Ill 



When the excitement of the Festa had sub- 
sided, we were free to abandon ourselves to the 
excursions in which the neighbourhood of Cor- 
tina abounds, and to which the guide-book ear- 
nestly calls every right-minded traveller. A walk 
through the light-green shadows of the larch- 
woods to the tiny lake of Ghedina, where we could 
see all the four dozen trout swimming about in 
the clear water and catching flies ; a drive to the 
Belvedere, where there are superficial refresh- 
ments above and profound grottos below — these 



152 LITTLE RIVERS 

were trifles, though we enjoyed them. But the 
great mountains encircling us on every side, stand- 
ing out in clear view with that distinctness and 
completeness of vision which is one charm of the 
Dolomites, seemed to summon us to more ardu- 
ous enterprises. Accordingly the Deacon and 
I selected the easiest one, engaged a guide, and 
prepared for the ascent. 

Monte Nuvolau is not a perilous mountain. I 
am quite sure that at my present time of life I 
should be unwilling to ascend a perilous moun- 
tain unless there were something extraordinarily 
desirable at the top, or remarkably disagreeable 
at the bottom. Mere risk has lost the attrac- 
tions which it once had. As the father of a fam- 
ily I feel bound to abstain from going for amuse- 
ment into any place which a Christian lady might 
not visit with propriety and safety. Our prepa- 
ration for Nuvolau, therefore, did not consist of 
ropes, ice-irons, and axes, but simply of a lunch 
and two long walking-sticks. 

Our way led us, in the early morning, through 
the clustering houses of Lacedel, up the broad 
green slope that faces Cortina on the west, to the 
beautiful Alp Pocol. Nothing could exceed the 
pleasure of such a walk in the cool of the day, 
while the dew still lies on the short, rich grass, 
and the myriads of flowers are at their brightest 
and sweetest. The infinite variety and abundance 
of the blossoms is a continual wonder. They are 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 153 

sown more thickly than the stars in heaven, and 
the rainbow itself does not show so many tints. 
Here they are mingled like the threads of some 
strange embroidery ; and there again Nature has 
massed her colours so that one spot will be all 
pale blue with innumerable forget-me-nots or dark 
blue with gentians, another will blush with the 
delicate pink of the Santa Lucia or the deeper red 
of the clover, and another will shine yellow as 
cloth of gold. Over all this opulence of bloom 
the larks were soaring and singing. I never heard 
so many as in the meadows about Cortina. There 
was always a sweet spray of music sprinkling 
down out of the sky, where the singers poised un- 
seen. It was like walking through a shower of 
melody. 

From the Alp Pocol, which is simply a fair, 
lofty pasture, we had our first full view of Nuvo- 
lau, rising bare and strong, like a hugh bastion, 
from the dark fir-woods. Through these our way 
led onward now for seven miles, with but a slight 
ascent. Then, turning off to the left, we began 
to climb sharply through the forest. There we 
found abundance of the lovely Alpine roses, which 
do not bloom on the lower ground. Their colour 
is a deep, glowing pink, and when a Tyrolese girl 
gives you one of these flowers to stick in the band 
of your hat, you may know that you have found 
favour in her eyes. 

Through the wood the cuckoo was calling— the 



i54 LITTLE RIVERS 

bird which reverses the law of good children, and 
insists on being heard, but not seen. 

When the forest was at an end we found our- 
selves at the foot of an alp which sloped steeply 
up to the Five Towers of Averau. The effect of 
these enormous masses of rock, standing out in 
lonely grandeur like the ruins of some forsaken 
habitation of giants, was tremendous. Seen from 
far below in the valley, their form was picturesque 
and striking ; but as we sat beside the clear, cold 
spring which gushes out at the foot of the largest 
tower, the Titanic rocks seemed to hang in the 
air above us as if they would overawe us into a 
sense of their majesty. We felt it to the full ; yet 
none the less, but rather the more, could we feel 
at the same time the delicate and ethereal beauty 
of the fringed gentianella and the pale Alpine lilies 
scattered on the short turf beside us. 

We had now been on foot about three hours and 
a half. The half-hour that remained was the 
hardest. Up over loose broken stones that rolled 
beneath our feet, up over great slopes of rough 
rock, up across little fields of snow, where we 
paused to celebrate the Fourth of July with a brief 
snowball fight, up along a narrowing ridge with 
a precipice on either hand, and so at last to the 
summit, eighty-six hundred feet above the sea. 

It is not a great height, but it is a noble situa- 
tion. For Nuvolau is fortunately placed in the 
very centre of the Dolomites, and so commands a 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 155 

finer view than many a higher mountain. Indeed, 
it is not from the highest peaks, according to my 
experience, that one gets the grandest prospects, 
but rather from those of middle height which are 
so isolated as to give a wide circle of vision, and 
from which one can see both the valleys and the 
summits. Monte Rosa itself gives a less impos- 
ing view than the Gorner Grat. 

It is possible, in this world, to climb too high 
for pleasure. 

But what a panorama Nuvolau gave us on that 
clear, radiant summer morning — a perfect circle 
of splendid sight! On one side we looked down 
upon the Five Towers ; on the other, a thousand 
feet below, the alps, dotted with the huts of the 
herdsmen, sloped down into the deep-cut vale of 
Agordo. Opposite to us was the enormous mass 
of Tofana, a pile of gray and pink and saffron 
rock. When we turned the other way, we faced 
a group of mountains as ragged as the crests of 
a line of fir-trees, and behind them loomed the 
solemn head of Pelmo. Across the broad vale of 
the Boite, Antelao stood beside Sorapis, like a 
campanile beside a cathedral, and Cristallo tow- 
ered above the green pass of the Three Crosses. 
Through that opening we could see the bristling 
peaks of the Sextenthal. Sweeping around in a 
wider circle from that point, we saw, beyond the 
Diirrenstein, the snow-covered pile of the Gross- 
Glockner ; the crimson bastions of the Rothwand 



156 LITTLE RIVERS 

appeared to the north, behind Tofana ; then the 
white slopes that hang far away above the Ziller- 
thal ; and, nearer, the Geislerspitze, like five fin- 
gers thrust into the air ; behind that, the distant 
Oetzthaler Mountain, and just a single white 
glimpse of the highest peak of the Ortler by the 
Engadine ; nearer still we saw the vast fortress of 
the Sella group and the red combs of the Rosen- 
garten ; Monte Marmolata, the queen of the Dol- 
omites, stood before us revealed from base to peak 
in a bridal dress of snow; and southward we 
looked into the dark rugged face of La Civetta, 
rising sheer out of the vale of Agordo, where the 
Lake of Alleghe slept unseen. It was a sea of 
mountains, tossed around us into a myriad of mo- 
tionless waves, and with a rainbow of colours 
spread among their hollows and across their crests. 
The cliffs of rose and orange and silver gray, the 
valleys of deepest green, the distant shadows of 
purple and melting blue, and the dazzling white 
of the scattered snow-fields seemed to shift and 
vary like the hues on the inside of a shell. And 
over all, from peak to peak, the light, feathery 
clouds went drifting lazily and slowly, as if they 
could not leave a scene so fair. 

There is barely room on the top of Nuvolau for 
the stone shelter-hut which a grateful Saxon baron 
has built there as a sort of votive offering for the 
recovery of his health among the mountains. As 
we sat within and ate our frugal lunch, we were 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 157 

glad that ho had recovered his health, and glad 
that he had built the hut, and glad that we had 
come to it. In lad, we could almost sympathize, 
in our cold, matter-of-fact American way, with 
the sentimental German inscription which we read 
on the wall : 

"Von Nuvolau's hohen Wolkenstiifcn 

Lam mich, Natur, durch deine Himmel rufen— 

An delner Bruit geiunde, wcr ds kr&nk ! 

So wird zinn VSlktrdanh tneln Sachstndanh." 

We refrained, however, from shouting anything 
through Nature's heaven, but went lightly down, 
in about three hours, to supper in " The Star of 
Gold." 

IV 

When a stern necessity forces one to leave Cor- 
tina, there are several ways of departure. We 
selected the main highway for our trunks, but for 
ourselves the Pass of the Three Crosses ; the Dea- 
con and the Deaconess in a mountain wagon, and 
I on foot. It should be written as an axiom in 
the philosophy of travel that the easiest way is 
best for your luggage, and the hardest way is best 
for yourself. 

All along the rough road up to the pass we had 
a glorious outlook backward over I he Val d'Am- 
pezzo, and when we came to the top we looked 
deep down into the narrow Val Huona behind 
Sorapis. I do not know just when we passed the 



158 LITTLE RIVERS 

Austrian border, but when we came to Lake Mi- 
surina we found ourselves in Italy again. My 
friends went on down the valley to Landro, but 
I, in my weakness, having eaten of the trout of 
the lake for dinner, could not resist the tempta- 
tion of staying overnight to catch one for break- 
fast. 

It was a pleasant failure. The lake was beau- 
tiful, lying on top of the mountain like a bit of 
blue sky, surrounded by the peaks of Cristallo, 
Cadino, and the Drei Zinnen. It was a happi- 
ness to float on such celestial waters and cast the 
hopeful fly. The trout were there ; they were large; 
I saw them ; they also saw me ; but, alas ! I could not 
raise them. Misurina is, in fact, what the Scotch 
call" a dour loch," one of those places which are 
outwardly beautiful, but inwardly so demoralized 
that the trout will not rise. 

When we came ashore in the evening the boat- 
man consoled me with the story of a French count 
who had spent two weeks there fishing, and only 
caught one fish. I had some thoughts of staying 
thirteen days longer, to rival the count, but con- 
cluded to go on the next morning, over Monte 
Pian and the Cat's Ladder to Landro. 

The view from Monte Pian is far less extensive 
than that from Nuvolau ; but it has the advantage 
of being very near the wild jumble of the Sexten 
Dolomites. The Three Shoemakers and a lot 
more of sharp and ragged fellows are close by, on 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 159 

the east ; on the west, Cristallo shows its fine lit- 
tle glacier, and Rothwand its crimson cliffs ; and 
southward Misurina gives to the view a glimpse 
of water, without which, indeed, no view is com- 
plete. Moreover, the mountain has the merit of 
being, as its name implies, quite gentle. I met 
the Deacon and the Deaconess at the top, they 
having walked up from Landro. And so we 
crossed the boundary line together again, seven 
thousand feet above the sea, from Italy into Aus- 
tria. There was no custom-house. 

The way down, by the Cat's Ladder, I travelled 
alone. The path was very steep and little worn, 
but even on the mountain-side there was no dan- 
ger of losing it, for it had been blazed here and 
there, on trees and stones, with a dash of blue 
paint. This is the work of the invaluable DOAV 
— which is, being interpreted, the German-Aus- 
trian Alpine Club. The more one travels in the 
mountains, the more one learns to venerate this 
beneficent society for the shelter-huts and guide- 
posts it has erected, and the paths it has made 
and marked distinctly with various colours. The 
Germans have a genius for thoroughness. My 
little brown guide-book, for example, not only in- 
formed me through whose back yard I must go 
to get into a certain path, but it told me that in 
such and such a spot I should find quite a good 
deal (ziemlick viel) of edelweiss, and in another a 
small echo ; it advised me in one valley to take 



160 LITTLE RIVERS 

provisions and dispense with a guide, and in an- 
other to take a guide and dispense with provisions, 
adding varied information in regard to beer, which 
in my case was useless, for I could not touch it. 
To go astray under such auspices would be worse 
than inexcusable. 

Landro we found a very different place from 
Cortina. Instead of having a large church and a 
number of small hotels, it consists entirely of one 
large hotel and a very tiny church. It does not 
lie in a broad, open basin, but in a narrow valley, 
shut in closely by the mountains. The hotel, in 
spite of its size, is excellent, and a few steps up 
the valley is one of the finest views in the Dolo- 
mites. To the east opens a deep, wild gorge, at 
the head of which the pinnacles of the Drei Zin- 
nen are seen; to the south the Diirrensee fills the 
valley from edge to edge, and reflects in its pale 
waters the huge bulk of Monte Cristallo. It is 
such a complete picture, so finished, so compact, 
so balanced, that one might think a painter had 
composed it in a moment of inspiration. But no 
painter ever laid such colours on his canvas as 
those which are seen here when the cool evening 
shadows have settled upon the valley, all gray 
and green, while the mountains shine above in 
rosy Alpenglow, as if transfigured with inward 
fire. 

There is another lake, about three miles north 
of Landro, called the Toblacher See, and there 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 161 

I repaired the defeat of Misurina. The trout at 
the outlet, by the bridge, were very small, and 
while the old fisherman was endeavouring to catch 
some of them in his new net, which would not 
work, I pushed my boat up to the head of the 
lake, where the stream came in. The green wa- 
ter was amazingly clear, but the current kept the 
fish with, their heads up-stream, so that one could 
come up behind them near enough for a long cast, 
without being seen. As my fly lighted above them 
and came gently down with the ripple, I saw the 
first fish turn and rise and take it. A motion of 
the wrist hooked him, and he played just as gamely 
as a trout in my favourite Long Island pond. 
How different the colour, though, as he came out 
of the water! This fellow was all silvery, with 
light pink spots on his sides. I took seven of his 
companions, in weight some four pounds, and then 
stopped because the evening light was failing. 

How pleasant it is to fish in such a place and 
at such an hour! The novelty of the scene, the 
grandeur of the landscape, lend a strange charm 
to the sport. But the sport itself is so familiar 
that one feels at home — the motion of the rod, 
the feathery swish of the line, the sight of the ris- 
ing fish — it all brings back a hundred woodland 
memories, and thoughts of good fishing comrades, 
some far away across the sea, and perhaps even 
now sitting around the forest camp-fire in Maine 
or Canada, and some with whom we shall keep 



i6 2 LITTLE RIVERS 

company no more until we cross the greater ocean 
into that happy country whither they have pre- 
ceded us. 



Instead of going straight down the valley by 
the high road, a drive of an hour, to the railway 
in the Pusterthal, I walked up over the mountains 
to the east, across the Platzwiesen, and so down 
through the Pragserthal. In one arm of the deep 
fir-clad vale are the baths of Alt-Prags, famous for 
having cured the Countess of Gorz of a violent 
rheumatism in the fifteenth century. It is an an- 
tiquated establishment, and the guests, who were 
walking about in the fields or drinking their coffee 
in the balcony, as I passed through, had a fif- 
teenth-century look about them — venerable, but 
slightly ruinous. But perhaps that was merely a 
rheumatic result. 

All the wagons in the place were engaged. It 
is strange what an aggravating effect this state of 
affairs has upon a pedestrian who is bent upon 
riding. I did not recover my delight in the scen- 
ery until I had walked about five miles farther, 
and sat down on the grass, beside a beautiful 
spring, to eat my lunch. 

What is there in a little physical rest that has 
such magic to restore the sense of pleasure? A 
few moments ago nothing pleased you — the bloom 
was gone from the peach ; but now it has come 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 163 

back again— you wonder and admire. Thus 
cheerful and contented, I trudged up the right arm 
of the valley to the baths of Neu-Prags, less ven- 
erable, but apparently more popular than Alt- 
Prags, and on beyond them, through the woods, 
to the superb Pragser-Wildsee, a lake whose still 
waters, now blue as sapphire under the clear sky, 
and now green as emerald under gray clouds, 
sleep encircled by mighty precipices. Could any- 
thing be a greater contrast with Venice? There 
the canals alive with gondolas, and the open har- 
bour bright with many-coloured sails ; here the 
hidden lake, silent and lifeless, save when, as 
Wordsworth wrote, 

"A leaping fish 
Sends through the tarn a lonely cheer." 

Tired, and a little footsore, after nine hours' 
walking, I came into the big railway hotel at To- 
blach that night. There I met my friends again, 
and parted from them and the Dolomites the next 
day with regret. For they were " stepping west- 
ward " ; but in order to get to the Gross-Venedi- 
ger I must make a detour to the east, through the 
Pusterthal, and come up through the valley of the 
Isel to the great chain of mountains called the 
Hohe Tauern. 

At the junction of the Isel and the Drau lies 
the quaint little city of Lienz, with its two castles 
—the square, double-towered one in the town, now 



i6 4 LITTLE RIVERS 

transformed into the offices of the municipality, 
and the huge mediaeval one on a hill outside, now- 
used as a damp restaurant and dismal beer-cellar. 
I lingered at Lienz for a couple of days, in the 
ancient hostelry of the Post. The hallways were 
vaulted like a cloister, the walls were three feet 
thick, the kitchen was in the middle of the house 
on the second floor, so that I looked into it every 
time I came from my room, and ordered dinner 
direct from the cook. But, so far from being dis- 
pleased with these peculiarities, I rather liked the 
flavour of them ; and then, in addition, the land- 
lady's daughter, who was managing the house, 
was a person of most engaging manners, and 
there was trout and grayling fishing in a stream 
near by, and the neighbouring church of Dolsach 
contained the beautiful picture of the Holy Fam- 
ily which Franz Defregger painted for his native 
village. 

The peasant women of Lienz have one very 
striking feature in their dress — a black felt hat 
with a broad, stiff brim and a high crown, smaller 
at the top than at the base. It looks a little like 
the traditional head-gear of the Pilgrim Fathers, 
exaggerated. There is a solemnity about it which 
is fatal to feminine beauty. 

I went by the post-wagon, with two slow horses 
and ten passengers, fifteen miles up the Iselthal, 
to Windisch-Matrei, a village whose early history 
is lost in the mist of antiquity, and whose streets 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 165 

are pervaded with odours which must have origi- 
nated at the same time with the village. One 
wishes that they also might have shared the fate 
of its early history. But it is not fair to expect 
too much of a small place, and Windisch-Matrei 
has certainly a beautiful situation and a good inn. 
There I took my guide — a wiry and companion- 
able little man, whose occupation in the lower 
world was that of a maker and merchant of hats 
— and set out for the Pragerhiitte, a shelter on the 
side of the Gross-Venediger. 

The path led under the walls of the old Castle 
of Weissenstein, and then in sharp curves up the 
cliff which blocks the head of the valley, and 
along a cut in the face of the rock, into the steep, 
narrow Tauernthal, which divides the Glockner 
group from the Venediger. How entirely differ- 
ent it was from the region of the Dolomites! 
There the variety of colour was endless and the 
change incessant ; here it was all green grass and 
trees and black rocks, with glimpses of snow. 
There the highest mountains were in sight con- 
stantly ; here they could only be seen from certain 
points in the valley. There the streams played 
but a small part in the landscape ; here they were 
prominent, the main river raging and foaming 
through the gorge below, while a score of water- 
falls leaped from the cliffs on either side and 
dashed down to join it. 

The peasants, men, women, and children, were 



i66 LITTLE RIVERS 

cutting the grass in the perpendicular fields ; the 
woodmen were trimming and felling the trees in 
the fir forests ; the cattle-tenders were driving 
their cows along the stony path, or herding them 
far up on the hillsides. It was a lonely scene, 
and yet a busy one ; and all along the road was 
written the history of the perils and hardships of 
the life which now seemed so peaceful and pictu- 
resque under the summer sunlight. 

These heavy crosses, each covered with a nar- 
row, pointed roof and decorated with a rude pic- 
ture, standing beside the path, or on the bridge, 
or near the mill — what do they mean? They 
mark the place where a human life has been lost, 
or where some poor peasant has been delivered 
from a great peril, and has set up a memorial of 
his gratitude. 

Stop, traveller, as you pass by, and look at the 
pictures. They have little more of art than a 
child's drawing on a slate ; but they will teach 
you what it means to earn a living in these moun- 
tains. They tell of the danger that lurks on the 
steep slopes of grass, where the mowers have to 
go down with ropes around their waists, and in 
the beds of the streams where the floods sweep 
through in the spring, and in the forests where 
the great trees fall and crush men like flies, and 
on the icy bridges where a slip is fatal, and on the 
high passes where the winter snow-storm blinds 
the eyes and benumbs the limbs of the traveller, 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 167 

and under the cliffs from which avalanches slide 
and rocks roll. They show you men and women 
falling from wagons, and swept away by waters, 
and overwhelmed in land-slips. In the corner of 
the picture you may see a peasant with the black 
cross above his head — that means death. Or per- 
haps it is deliverance that the tablet commemo- 
rates ; and then you will see the miller kneeling 
beside his mill with a flood rushing down upon it, 
or a peasant kneeling in his harvest-field under an 
inky-black cloud, or a landlord beside his inn in 
flames, or a mother praying beside her sick chil- 
dren ; and above appears an angel, or a saint, or 
the Virgin with her Child. 

Read the inscriptions, too, in their quaint Ger- 
man. Some of them are as humourous as the 
epitaphs in New England graveyards. I remem- 
ber one which ran like this : 

" Here lies Elias Queer, 
Killed in his sixtieth year; 
Scarce had he seen the light of day 
When a wagon-wheel crushed his life away." 

And there is another famous one which says : 

" Here perished the honoured and virtuous 

maiden, 

G. V. 

This tablet was erected by her only son." 

But for the most part a glance at these Marterl 
und Taferly which are so frequent on all the 



168 LITTLE RIVERS 

mountain-roads of the Tyrol, will give you a 
strange sense of the real pathos of human life. If 
you are a Catholic, you will not refuse their re- 
quest to say a prayer for the departed ; if you are 
a Protestant, at least it will not hurt you to say 
one for those who still live and suffer and toil 
among such dangers. 

After we had walked for four hours up the 
Tauernthal, we came to the Matreier-Tauernhaus, 
an inn which is kept open all the year for the shel- 
ter of travellers over the high pass that crosses the 
mountain-range at this point from north to south. 
There we dined. It was a bare, rude place, but 
the dish of juicy trout was garnished with flowers, 
each fish holding a big pansy in its mouth ; and 
as the maid set them down before me she wished 
me "a good appetite " with the hearty, old-fash- 
ioned Tyrolese courtesy which still survives in 
these remote valleys. It is pleasant to travel in 
a land where the manners are plain and good. If 
you meet a peasant on the road he says, " God 
greet you!" if you give a child a couple of kreu- 
zers he folds his hands and says, "God reward 
you! " and the maid who lights you to bed says, 
" Good-night; I hope you will sleep well!" 

Two hours more of walking brought us through 
Ausser-gschloss and Inner-gschloss, two groups 
of herdsmen's huts, tenanted only in summer, at 
the head of the Tauernthal. Midway between 
them lies a little chapel, cut into the solid rock, 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 169 

for shelter from the avalanches. This lofty vale 
is indeed rightly named ; for it is shut off from the 
rest of the world. The portal is a cliff down 
which the stream rushes in foam and thunder. 
On either hand rises a mountain wall. Within, 
the pasture is fresh and green, sprinkled with Al- 
pine roses, and the pale river flows swiftly down 
between the rows of dark wooden houses. At the 
head of the vale towers the Gross-Venediger, with 
its glaciers and snow-fields dazzling white against 
the deep blue heaven. The murmur of the stream 
and the tinkle of the cow-bells and the jodelling 
of the herdsmen far up the slopes make the mu- 
sic for the scene. 

The path from Gschloss leads straight up to the 
foot of the dark pyramid of the Kesselkopf, and 
then in steep endless zigzags along the edge of 
the great glacier. I saw, at first, the pinnacles 
of ice far above me, breaking over the face of the 
rock ; then, after an hour's breathless climbing, I 
could look right into the blue crevasses ; and at 
last, after another hour over soft snow-fields and 
broken rocks, I was at the Pragerhut, perched on 
the shoulder of the mountain, looking down upon 
the huge river of ice. 

It was a magnificent view under the clear light 
of evening. Here in front of us the Venediger, 
with all his brother mountains clustered about 
him; behind us, across the Tauern, the mighty 
chain of the Glockner against the eastern sky. 



i 7 o LITTLE RIVERS 

This is the frozen world. Here the Winter, 
driven back into his stronghold, makes his last 
stand against the Summer, in perpetual conflict, 
retreating by day to the mountain-peak, but creep- 
ing back at night in frost and snow to regain a 
little of his lost territory, until at last the Summer 
is wearied out, and the Winter sweeps down again 
to claim the whole valley for his own. 

VI 

In the Pragerhut I found mountain comfort. 
There were bunks along the wall of the guest- 
room, with plenty of blankets. There was good 
store of eggs, canned meats, and nourishing black 
bread. The friendly goats came bleating up to 
the door at nightfall to be milked. And in charge 
of all this luxury there was a cheerful peasant wife 
with her brown-eyed daughter, to entertain trav- 
ellers. It was a pleasant sight to see them, as 
they sat down to their supper with my guide ; all 
three bowed their heads and said their "grace be- 
fore meat," the guide repeating the longer prayer, 
and the mother and daughter coming in with the 
responses. I went to bed with a warm and com- 
fortable feeling about my heart. It was a good 
ending for the day. In the morning, if the wea- 
ther remained clear, the alarm-clock was to wake 
us at three for the ascent to the summit. 

But can it be three o'clock already? The gib- 



ALPENROSEN AND GOAT'S MILK 171 

bous moon still hangs in the sky and casts a feeble 
light over the scene. Then up and away for the 
final climb. How rough the path is among the 
black rocks along the ridge ! Now we strike out 
on the gently rising glacier, across the crust of 
snow, picking our way among the crevasses, with 
the rope tied about our waists for fear of a fall. 
How cold it is ! But now the gray light of morn- 
ing dawns, and now the beams of sunrise shoot 
up behind the Glockner, and now the sun itself 
glitters into sight. The snow grows softer as we 
toil up the steep, narrow comb between the Gross- 
Venediger and his neighbour the Klein- Venedi- 
ger. At last we have reached our journey's end. 
See, the whole of the Tyrol is spread out before 
us in wondrous splendour, as we stand on this 
snowy ridge ; and at our feet the Schlatten glacier, 
like a long, white snake, curls down into the val- 
ley. 

There is still a little peak above us ; an over- 
hanging horn of snow which the wind has built 
against the mountain-top. I would like to stand 
there, just for a moment. The guide protests it 
would be dangerous, for if the snow should break 
it would be a fall of a thousand feet to the glacier 
on the northern side. But let us dare the few 
steps upward. How our feet sink! Is the snow 
slipping? Look at the glacier ! What is happen- 
ing? It is wrinkling and curling backward on 
us, serpent-like. Its head rises far above us. All 



1 72 LITTLE RIVERS 

its icy crests are clashing together like the ringing 
of a thousand bells. We are falling! I fling out 
my arm to grasp the guide — and awake to find 
myself clutching a pillow in the bunk. The alarm- 
clock is ringing fiercely for three o'clock. A driv- 
ing snow-storm is beating against the window. 
The ground is white. Peer through the clouds 
as I may, I cannot even catch a glimpse of the 
vanished Gross-Venediger. 




AU LARGE 



Wherever we strayed, the same tranquil leisure enfolded 
tts; day followed day in an order unbroken and peaceful 
as the -unfolding of the flowers and the silent march of 
the stars. Time no longer raft like the few sands in a 
delicate hour-glass held by a fragile human hand, but 
like a majestic river fed by fathomless seas. . . . We 
gave ourselves up to the sweetness of that unmeasured 
life, without thought of yesterday or to-morrow; we 
drank the cup to-day held to our lips, and knew that so 
long as we were athirst that draught would not be de- 
nied us." — Hamilton W. Mabie: Under the Trees. 




AU LARGE 



HERE is magic in words, surely, and 
many a. treasure besides Ali Baba's is 
unlocked with a verbal key. Some 
charm in the mere sound, some asso- 
ciation with the pleasant past, touches a secret 
spring. The bars are down ; the gate is open ; 
you are made free of all the fields of memory and 
fancy — by a word. 

"Au large / Envoyez ait large ! " is the cry of 
the Canadian voyageurs as they thrust their paddles 
against the shore and push out on the broad lake for 
a journey through the wilderness. " Au large / " 
is what the man in the bow shouts to the man in 
the stern when the birch canoe is running down 
the rapids, and the water grows too broken, and 
the rocks too thick, along the river-bank. Then 
the frail bark must be driven out into the very 
centre of the wild current, into the midst of dan- 
ger to find safety, dashing, like a frightened colt, 



176 LITTLE RIVERS 

along the smooth, sloping lane bordered by white 
fences of foam. 

Ate large / When I hear that word, I hear also 
the crisp waves breaking on pebbly beaches, and 
the big wind rushing through innumerable trees, 
and the roar of headlong rivers leaping down the 
rocks. I see long reaches of water sparkling in 
the sun, or sleeping still between evergreen walls 
beneath a cloudy sky ; and the gleam of white tents 
on the shore ; and the glow of firelight dancing 
through the woods. I smell the delicate vanish- 
ing perfume of forest flowers ; and the incense of 
rolls of birch-bark, crinkling and flaring in the 
camp-fire; and the soothing odour of balsam- 
boughs piled deep for woodland beds — the veri- 
table and only genuine perfume of the land of Nod. 
The thin shining veil of the Northern lights waves 
and fades and brightens over the night sky ; at the 
sound of the word, as at the ringing of a bell, the 
curtain rises. Scene, the Forest of Arden ; enter a 
party of hunters. 

It was in the Lake St. John country, two hun- 
dred miles north of Quebec, that I first heard my 
rustic incantation ; and it seemed to fit the region 
as if it had been made for it. This is not a little 
pocket wilderness like the Adirondacks, but some- 
thing vast and primitive. You do not cross it, 
from one railroad to another, by a line of hotels. 
You go into it by one river as far as you like, or 
dare ; and then you turn and come back again by 



AU LARGE 177 

another river, making haste to get out before your 
provisions are exhausted. The lake itself is the 
cradle of the mighty Saguenay, an inland sea, 
thirty miles across and nearly round, lying in the 
broad limestone basin north of the Laurentian 
Mountains. The southern and eastern shores 
have been settled for twenty or thirty years ; and 
the rich farm-land yields abundant crops of wheat 
and oats and potatoes to a community of industri- 
ous habitants, who live in little modern villages 
named after the saints, and gathered as closely as 
possible around big graystone churches, and thank 
the good Lord that he has given them a climate at 
least four or five degrees milder than Quebec. A 
railroad, built through a region of granite hills 
which will never be tamed to the plough, links 
this outlying settlement to the civilized world; 
and at the end of the railroad the Hotel Roberval, 
standing on a hill above the lake, offers to the 
pampered tourist electric lights, and spring-beds, 
and a wide veranda from which he can look out 
across the water into the face of the wilderness. 

Northward and westward the interminable for- 
est rolls away to the shores of Hudson Bay and 
the frozen wastes of Labrador. It is an immense 
solitude. A score of rivers empty into the lake ; 
little ones like the Pikouabi and La Pipe, and mid- 
dle-sized ones like the Ouiatchouan and La Belle 
Riviere, and big ones like the Mistassini and the 
Peribonca ; and each of these streams is the clue 



178 LITTLE RIVERS 

to a labyrinth of woods and waters. The canoe- 
man who follows it far enough will find himself 
among lakes that are not named on any map ; he 
will camp on virgin ground, and make the acquain- 
tance of unsophisticated fish ; perhaps, even, like 
the maiden in the fairy-tale, he will meet with the 
little bear, and the middle-sized bear, and the 
great big bear. 

Damon and I set out on such an expedition 
shortly after the nodding lilies in the Connecticut 
meadows had rung the noontide bell of summer, 
and when the raspberry-bushes along the line of 
the Quebec and Lake St. John Railway had spread 
their afternoon collation for birds and men. At 
Roberval we found our four guides waiting for us, 
and the steamboat took us all across the lake to 
the Island House, at the northeast corner. There 
we embarked our tents and blankets, our pots and 
pans, our bags of flour and potatoes and bacon 
and other delicacies, our rods and guns, and last, 
but not least, our axes (without which man in the 
woods is a helpless creature), in two birch-bark 
canoes, and went flying down the Grande De- 
charge. 

It is a wonderful place, this outlet of Lake St. 
John. All the floods of twenty rivers are gathered 
here, and break forth through a net of islands in 
a double stream, divided by the broad He d'Alma 
into the Grande Decharge and the Petite D6- 
charge. The southern outlet is small, and flows 



AU LARGE 179 

somewhat more quietly at first. But the northern 
outlet is a huge confluence and tumult of waters. 
You see the set of the tide far out in the lake, 
sliding, driving, crowding, hurrying in with 
smooth currents and swirling eddies toward the 
corner of escape. By the rocky cove where the 
Island House peers out through the fir-trees the 
current already has a perceptible slope. It begins 
to boil over hidden stones in the middle, and gur- 
gles at projecting points of rock. A mile farther 
down there is an islet where the stream quickens, 
chafes, and breaks into a rapid. Behind the islet 
it drops down in three or four foaming steps. On 
the outside it makes one long, straight rush into 
a line of white-crested standing waves. 

As we approached, the steersman in the first 
canoe stood up to look over the course. The sea 
was high. Was it too high? The canoes were 
heavily loaded. Could they leap the waves? 
There was a quick talk among the guides as we 
slipped along, undecided which way to turn. Then 
the question seemed to settle itself, as most of 
these woodland questions do, as if some silent 
force of Nature had the casting-vote. " Sautez, 
sautez ! " cried Ferdinand, " envoyezau large! " In 
a moment we were sliding down the smooth back 
of the rapid, directly toward the first big wave. 
The rocky shore went by us like a dream ; we 
could feel the motion of the earth whirling around 
with us. The crest of the billow in front curled 



180 LITTLE RIVERS 

above the bow of the canoe. "Arret\ arret', 
doucement! " A swift stroke of the paddle checked 
the canoe, quivering and prancing like a horse 
suddenly reined in. The wave ahead, as if sur- 
prised, sank and flattened for a second. The 
canoe leaped through the edge of it, swerved to 
one side, and ran gayly down along the fringe of 
the line of billows into quieter water. 

Every one feels the exhilaration of such a de- 
scent. I know a lady who almost cried with 
fright when she went down her first rapid, but 
before the voyage was ended she was saying : 

" Count that day lost whose low, descending sun 
Sees no fall leaped, no foaming rapid run." 

It takes a touch of danger to bring out the joy of 
life. 

Our guides began to shout, and joke each other, 
and praise their canoes. 

" You grazed that villain rock at the corner," 
said Jean ; " didn't you know where it was? " 

"Yes, after I touched it," cried Ferdinand; 
" but you took in a bucket of water, and I suppose 
your m'sieu' is sitting on a piece of the river. Is 
it not? " 

This seemed to us all a very merry jest, and 
we laughed with the same inextinguishable laugh- 
ter which a practical joke, according to Homer, 
always used to raise in Olympus. It is one of 
the charms of life in the woods that it brings back 
the high spirits of boyhood and renews the youth 



AU LARGE 181 

of the world. Plain fun, like plain food, tastes 
good out of doors. Nectar is the sweet sap of a 
maple-tree. Ambrosia is only another name for 
well-turned flapjacks. And all the immortals, sit- 
ting around the table of golden cedar-slabs, make 
merry when the clumsy Hephaistos, playing the 
part of Hebe, stumbles over a root and upsets the 
plate of cakes into the fire. 

The first little rapid of the Grande Decharge 
was only the beginning. Half a mile below we 
could see the river disappear between two points 
of rock. There was a roar of conflict, and a 
golden mist hanging in the air, like the smoke of 
battle. All along the place where the river sank 
from sight, dazzling heads of foam were flashing 
up and falling back, as if a horde of water-sprites 
were vainly trying to fight their way up to the lake. 
It was the top of the grande chute, a wild succes- 
sion of falls and pools where no boat could live 
for a moment. We ran down toward it as far as 
the water served, and then turned off among the 
rocks on the left hand, to take the portage. 

These portages are among the troublesome de- 
lights of a journey in the wilderness. To the 
guides they mean hard work, for everything, in- 
cluding the boats, must be carried on their backs. 
The march of the canoes on dry land is a curious 
sight. Andrew Marvell described it two hundred 
years ago when he was poetizing beside the little 
river Wharfe in Yorkshire : 



182 LITTLE RIVERS 

" And now the salmon-fishers moist 
Their leathern boats begin to hoist, 
And like antipodes in shoes 
Have shod their heads in their canoes; 
How tortoise-like, but none so slow, 
These rational amphibii go !" 

But the sportsman carries nothing, except per- 
haps his gun, or his rod, or his photographic 
camera; and so for him the portage is only a 
pleasant opportunity to stretch his legs, cramped 
by sitting in the canoe, and to renew his acquain- 
tance with the pretty things that are in the woods. 

We sauntered along the trail, Damon and I, as 
if school were out and would never keep again. 
How fresh and tonic the forest seemed as we 
plunged into its bath of shade! There were our 
old friends the cedars, with their roots twisted 
across the path ; and the white birches, so trim in 
youth and so shaggy in age; and the sociable 
spruces and balsams, crowding close together, 
and interlacing their arms overhead. There were 
the little springs, trickling through the moss ; and 
the slippery logs laid across the marshy places ; 
and the fallen trees, cut in two and pushed aside — 
for this was a much-travelled portage. 

Around the open spaces the tall meadow-rue 
stood dressed in robes of fairy white and green. 
The blue banners of the fleur-de-lis were planted 
beside the springs. In shady corners, deeper in 
the wood, the fragrant pyrola lifted its scape of 



AU LARGE 183 

clustering bells, like a lily-of-the-valley wandered 
to the forest. When we came to the end of the 
portage, a perfume like that of cyclamens in Tyro- 
lean meadows welcomed us, and searching among 
the loose grasses by the water-side we found the 
exquisite purple spikes of the lesser-fringed orchis, 
loveliest and most ethereal of all the woodland 
flowers save one. And what one is that? Ah, 
my friend, it is your own particular favourite, the 
flower, by whatever name you call it, that you 
plucked long ago when you were walking in the 
forest with your sweetheart, 

" Im wunderschonen Monat Mai 
Als alle Knospen sprangen." 

We launched our canoes again on the great pool 
at the foot of the first fall — a broad sweep of wa- 
ter a mile long and half a mile wide, full of eddies 
and strong currents, and covered with drifting 
foam. There was the old camp -ground on the 
point, where I had tented so often with my lady 
Greygown, fishing for ouananiche, the famous 
land-locked salmon of Lake St. John. And there 
were the big fish, showing their back fins as they 
circled lazily around in the eddies, as if they were 
waiting to play with us. But the goal of our day's 
journey was miles away, and we swept along with 
the stream, now through a rush of quick water, 
boiling and foaming, now through a still place like 
a lake, now through 



184 LITTLE RIVERS 

" Fairy crowds 
Of islands, that together lie, 
As quietly as spots of sky 
Among the evening clouds." 

The beauty of the shores was infinitely varied, 
and unspoiled by any sign of the presence of man. 
We met no company except a few kingfishers, and 
a pair of gulls who had come up from the sea to 
spend the summer, and a large flock of wild ducks, 
which the guides call " Betseys," as if they were 
all of the gentler sex. In such a big family of 
girls we supposed that a few would not be missed, 
and Damon bagged two of the tenderest for our 
supper. 

In the still water at the mouth of the Riviere 
Mistook, just above the Rapide aux Cedres, we 
went ashore on a level-wooded bank to make our 
first camp and cook our dinner. Let me try to 
sketch our men as they are busied about the fire. 

They are all French Canadians of unmixed 
blood, descendants of the men who came to New 
France with Samuel de Champlain, that incom- 
parable old woodsman and lifelong lover of the 
wilderness. Ferdinand Larouche is our chef— 
there must be a head in every party for the sake 
of harmony — and his assistant is his brother Fran- 
cois. Ferdinand is a stocky little fellow, a ' ' sawed- 
off " man, not more than five feet two inches tall, 
but every inch of him is pure vim. He can carry 
a big canoe or a hundredweight of camp stuff over 



AU LARGE 185 

a mile portage without stopping to take breath. 
He is a capital canoe-man, with prudence enough 
to ballast his courage, and a fair cook, with plenty 
of that quality which is wanting in the ordinary 
cook of commerce — good humour. Always jok- 
ing, whistling, singing, he brings the atmosphere 
of a perpetual holiday along with him. His 
weather-worn coat covers a heart full of music. 
He has two talents which make him a marked 
man among his comrades. He plays the fiddle to 
the delight of all the balls and weddings through 
the country-side; and he speaks English to the 
admiration and envy of the other guides. But 
like all men of genius he is modest of his accom- 
plishments. " H'l not spik good h'English — 
h'only for camp — fishin', cookin', dhe voyage — 
h'all dhose t'ings." The aspirates puzzle him. 
He can get through a slash of fallen timber more 
easily than a sentence full of "this " and "that." 
Sometimes he expresses his meaning queerly. 
He was telling me once about his farm, " not far 
off here, in dhe Riviere au Cochon, river of dhe 
pig, you call 'im. H'l am a widow, got five sons, 
t'ree of dhem are girls." But he usually ends by 
falling back into French, which, he assures you, 
you speak to perfection, ' ' much better than the 
Canadians; the French of Paris, in short— m'sieu' 
has been in Paris?" Such courtesy is born in 
the blood, and is irresistible. You cannot help 
returning the compliment and assuring him that 



186 LITTLE RIVERS 

his English is remarkable, good enough for all 
practical purposes, better than any of the other 
guides can speak. And so it is. 

Francois is a little taller, a little thinner, and 
considerably quieter than Ferdinand. He laughs 
loyally at his brother's jokes, and sings the re- 
sponse to his songs, and wields a good second 
paddle in the canoe. 

Jean — commonly called Johnny — Morel is atall, 
strong man of fifty, with a bushy red beard that 
would do credit to a pirate. But when you look 
at him more closely you see that he has a clear, 
kind blue eye and a most honest, friendly face 
under his slouch-hat. He has travelled these 
woods and waters for thirty years, so that he 
knows the way through them by a thousand famil- 
iar signs, as well as you know the streets of the 
city. He is our pathfinder. 

The bow-paddle in his canoe is held by his son 
Joseph, a lad not quite fifteen, but already as tall 
and almost as strong as a man. " He is yet of 
the youth," said Johnny, " and he knows not the 
affairs of the camp. This trip is for him the first, 
— it is his school, — but I hope he will content you. 
He is good, m'sieu', and of the strongest for his 
age. I have educated already two sons in the bow 
of my canoe. The oldest has gone to Pennsyl- 
vanie ; he peels the bark there for the tanning of 
leather. The second had the misfortune of break- 
ing his leg, so that he can no longer kneel to pad- 



AU LARGE 187 

die. He has descended to the making of shoes. 
Joseph is my third pupil. And I have still a 
younger one at home waiting to come into my 
school." 

A touch of family life like that is always re- 
freshing, and doubly so in the wilderness. For 
what is fatherhood at its best, everywhere, but 
the training of good men to take the teacher's 
place when his work is done? Some day, when 
Johnny's rheumatism has made his joints a little 
stiffer and his eyes have lost something of their 
keenness, he will be wielding the second paddle 
in the boat, and going out only on the short and 
easy trips. It will be young Joseph that steers 
the canoe through the dangerous places, and car- 
ries the heaviest load over the portages, and leads 
the way on the long journeys. 

It has taken me longer to describe our men than 
it took them to prepare our frugal meal : a pot of 
tea, the woodsman's favourite drink (I never knew 
a good guide that would not go without whiskey 
rather than without tea), a few slices of toast and 
juicy rashers of bacon, a kettle of boiled potatoes, 
and a relish of crackers and cheese. We were in 
a hurry to be off for an afternoon's fishing, three 
or four miles down the river, at the He Maligne. 

The island is well named, for it is the most 
perilous place on the river, and has a record of 
disaster and death. The scattered waters of the 
Discharge are drawn together here into one deep, 



1 88 LITTLE RIVERS 

narrow, powerful stream, flowing between gloomy 
shores of granite. In mid-channel the wicked 
island shows its scarred and bristling head, like a 
giant ready to dispute the passage. The river 
rushes straight at the rocky brow, splits into two 
currents, and raves away on both sides of the 
island in a double chain of furious falls and rapids. 

In these wild waters we fished with immense 
delight and fair success, scrambling down among 
the huge rocks along the shore, and joining the 
excitement of an Alpine climb with the placid 
pleasures of angling. At nightfall we were at 
home again in our camp, with half a score of 
ouananiche, weighing from one to four pounds 
each. 

Our next day's journey was long and variegated. 
A portage of a mile or two across the He d'Alma, 
with a cart to haul our canoes and stuff, brought 
us to the Little Discharge, down which we floated 
for a little way, and then hauled through the vil- 
lage of St. Joseph to the foot of the Carcajou, or 
Wildcat Falls. A mile of quick water was soon 
passed, and we came to the junction of the Little 
Discharge with the Grand Discharge at the point 
where the picturesque club-house stands in a 
grove of birches beside the big Vache Caille Falls. 
It is lively work crossing the pool here, when the 
water is high and the canoes are heavy ; but we 
went through the labouring seas safely, and landed 
some distance below, at the head of the Rapide 



AU LARGE 189 

Gervais, to eat our lunch. The water was too 
rough to run down with loaded boats, so Damon 
and I had to walk about three miles along the river- 
bank, while the men went down with the canoes. 

On our way beside the rapids, Damon geolo- 
gized, finding the marks of ancient glaciers, and 
bits of iron ore, and pockets of sand full of infini- 
tesimal garnets, and specks of gold washed from 
the primitive granite ; and I fished, picking up a 
pair of ouananiche in foam-covered nooks among 
the rocks. The swift water was almost passed 
when we embarked again and ran down the last 
slope into a long dead-water. 

The shores, at first bold and rough, covered 
with dense thickets of second-growth timber, now 
became smoother and more fertile. Scattered 
farms, with square, unpainted houses, and long, 
thatched barns, began to creep over the hills 
toward the river. There was a hamlet, called St. 
Charles, with a rude little church and a campa- 
nile of logs. The cure, robed in decent black, 
and wearing a tall silk hat of the vintage of i860, 
sat on the veranda of his trim presbytery, looking 
down upon us, like an image of propriety smiling 
at Bohemianism. Other craft appeared on the 
river. A man and his wife paddling an old dug- 
out, with half a dozen children packed in amid- 
ships ; a crew of lumbermen, in a sharp-nosed 
bateau, picking up stray logs along the banks ; a 
couple of boat -loads of young people returning 



igo LITTLE RIVERS 

merrily from a holiday visit ; a party of berry- 
pickers in a flat -bottomed skiff ; all the life of the 
country-side was in evidence on the river. We 
felt quite as if we had been "in the swim" of 
society, when at length we reached the point 
where the Riviere des Aunes came tumbling down 
a hundred-foot ladder of broken black rocks. 
There we pitched our tents in a strip of meadow 
by the water-side, where we could have the sound 
of the falls for a slumber-song all night and the 
whole river for a bath at sunrise. 

A sparkling draught of crystal weather was 
poured into our stirrup-cup in the morning, as 
we set out for a drive of fifteen miles across coun- 
try to the Riviere a l'Ours, a tributary of the 
crooked, unnavigable river of Alders. The canoes 
and luggage were loaded on a couple of charrettes, 
or two-wheeled carts. But for us and the guides 
there were two quatre-roties, the typical vehicles 
of the century, as characteristic of Canada as the 
carriole is of Norway. It is a two-seated buck- 
board, drawn by one horse, and the back seat is 
covered with a hood like an old-fashioned poke- 
bonnet. The road is of clay and always rutty. 
It runs level for a while, and then jumps up a 
steep ridge and down again, or into a deep gully 
and out again. The habitant's idea of good driv- 
ing is to let his horse slide down the hill and gal- 
lop up. This imparts a spasmodic quality to the 
motion, like Carlyle's style. 



AU LARGE 191 

The native houses are strung along the road. 
The modern pattern has a convex angle in the 
roof, and dormer-windows ; it is a rustic adapta- 
tion of the Mansard. The antique pattern, which 
is far more picturesque, has a concave curve in the 
roof, and the eaves project like eyebrows, shad- 
ing the flatness of the face. Paint is a rarity. 
The prevailing colour is the soft gray of weather- 
beaten wood. Sometimes, in the better class of 
houses, a gallery is built across the front and 
around one side, and a square of garden is fenced 
in, with dahlias and hollyhocks and marigolds, 
and perhaps a struggling rose-bush, and usually 
a small patch of tobacco growing in one corner. 
Once in a long while you may see a balm-of-Gilead 
tree, or a clump of sapling poplars, planted near 
the door. 

How much better it would have been if the 
farmer had left a few of the noble forest-trees to 
shade his house! But then, when the farmer 
came into the wilderness he was not a farmer, he 
was first of all a wood-chopper. He regarded the 
forest as a stubborn enemy in possession of his 
land. He attacked it with fire and axe and exter- 
minated it, instead of keeping a few captives to 
hold their green umbrellas over his head when at 
last his grain-fields should be smiling around him, 
and he should sit down on his door-step to smoke 
a pipe of home-grown tobacco. 

In the time of adversity one should prepare for 



i 9 2 LITTLE RIVERS 

prosperity. I fancy there are a good many people 
unconsciously repeating the mistake of the Cana- 
dian farmer — chopping down all the native growths 
of life, clearing the ground of all the useless 
pretty things that seem to cumber it, sacrificing 
everything to utility and success. We fell the 
last green tree for the sake of raising an extra hill 
of potatoes ; and never stop to think what an 
ugly, barren place we may have to sit in while 
we eat them. The ideals, the attachments — yes, 
even the dreams of youth are worth saving. For 
the artificial tastes with which age tries to make 
good their loss grow very slowly and cast but a 
slender shade. 

Most of the Canadian farm-houses have their 
ovens out of doors. We saw them everywhere ; 
rounded edifices of clay, raised on a foundation of 
logs, and usually covered with a pointed roof of 
boards. They looked like little family chapels — 
and so they were ; shrines where the ritual of the 
good housewife was celebrated, and the gift of 
daily bread, having been honestly earned, was 
thankfully received. 

At one house we noticed a curious fragment of 
domestic economy. Half a pig was suspended 
over the chimney, and the smoke of the summer 
fire was turned to account in curing the winter's 
meat. I guess the children of that family had a 
peculiar fondness for the parental roof-tree. We 
saw them making mud-pies in the road, and ima- 



AU LARGE 193 

gined that they looked lovingly up at the pen- 
dent porker, outlined against the sky — a sign of 
promise, prophetic of bacon. 

About noon the road passed beyond the region 
of habitation into a barren land, where blueberries 
were the only crop, and partridges took the place 
of chickens. Through this rolling, gravelly plain, 
sparsely wooded and glowing with the tall ma- 
genta bloom of the fireweed, we drove toward the 
mountains, until the road went to seed and we 
could follow it no longer. Then we took to the 
water, and began to pole our canoes up the River 
of the Bear. It was a clear, amber-coloured 
stream, not more than ten or fifteen yards wide, 
running swift and strong over beds of sand and 
rounded pebbles. The canoes went wallowing 
and plunging up the narrow channel, between 
thick banks of alders, like clumsy sea-monsters. 
All the grace with which they move under the 
strokes of the paddle, in large waters, was gone. 
They looked uncouth and predatory, like a pair 
of seals that I once saw swimming far up the river 
Ristigouche in chase of fish. From the bow of 
each canoe the landing-net stuck out as a symbol 
of destruction — after the fashion of the Dutch ad- 
miral who nailed a broom to his masthead. But 
it would have been impossible to sweep the trout 
out of that little river by any fair method of an- 
gling, for there were millions of them ; not large, 
but lively, and brilliant, and fat ; they leaped in 



i 9 4 LITTLE RIVERS 

every bend of the stream. We trailed our flies, 
and made quick casts here and there, as we went 
along. It was fishing on the wing. And when 
we pitched our tents in a hurry at nightfall on the 
low shore of Lac Sale, among the bushes where 
fire-wood was scarce and there were no sapins for 
the beds, we were comforted for the poorness of 
the camp-ground by the excellence of the trout 
supper. 

It was a bitter cold night for August. There 
was a skin of ice on the water-pail at daybreak. 
We were glad to be up and away for an early 
start. The river grew wilder and more difficult. 
There were rapids, and ruined dams built by the 
lumbermen years ago. At these places the trout 
were larger, and so plentiful that it was easy to 
hook two at a cast. It came on to rain furiously 
while we were eating our lunch. But we did not 
seem to mind it any more than the fish did. Here 
and there the river was completely blocked by 
fallen trees. The guides called it bouchcc, 
"corked," and leaped out gayly into the water 
with their axes to "uncork" it. We passed 
through some pretty lakes, unknown to the map- 
makers, and arrived, before sundown, at the Lake 
of the Bear, where we were to spend a couple of 
days. The lake was full of floating logs, and the 
water, raised by the heavy rains and the opera- 
tions of the lumbermen, was several feet above 
its usual level. Nature's landing-places were all 



AU LARGE 195 

blotted out, and we had to explore half-way around 
the shore before we could get out comfortably. 
We raised the tents on a small shoulder of a hill, 
a few rods above the water ; and a glorious camp- 
fire of birch-logs soon made us forget our misery 
as though it had not been. 

The name of the Lake of the Beautiful Trout 
made us desire to visit it. The portage was said 
to be only fifty acres long (the arpent is the pop- 
ular measure of distance here), but it passed over 
a ridge of newly burned land, and was so en- 
tangled with ruined woods and desolate of birds 
and flowers that it seemed to us at least five miles. 
The lake was charming— a sheet of singularly 
clear water, of a pale-green tinge, surrounded by 
wooded hills. In the translucent depths trout and 
pike live together, but whether in peace or not I 
cannot tell. Both of them grow to an enormous 
size, but the pike are larger and have more capa- 
cious jaws. One of them broke my tackle and 
went off with a silver spoon in his mouth, as if he 
had been born to it. Of course, the guides vowed 
that they saw him as he passed under the canoe, 
and declared that he must weigh thirty or forty 
pounds. The spectacles of regret always mag- 
nify. 

The trout were coy. We took only five of 
them, perfect specimens of the true Salvelinus 
fontinalis, with square tails, and carmine spots on 
their dark, mottled sides ; the largest weighed 



196 LITTLE RIVERS 

three pounds and three quarters, and the others 
were almost as heavy. 

On our way back to the camp we found the por- 
tage beset by innumerable and bloodthirsty foes. 
There are four grades of insect malignity in the 
woods. The mildest is represented by the winged 
idiot that John Burroughs's little boy called a 
" blunderhead." He dances stupidly before your 
face, as if lost in admiration, and finishes his 
pointless attack by getting in your eye, or down 
your throat. The next grade is represented by 
the midges. " Bite 'em no see 'em" is the In- 
dian name for these invisible atoms of animated 
pepper which settle upon you in the twilight and 
make your skin burn like fire. But their hour is 
brief, and when they depart they leave not a bump 
behind. One step lower in the scale we find the 
mosquito, or rather he finds us, and makes his 
poisoned mark upon our skin. But after all, he 
has his good qualities. The mosquito is a gentle- 
manly pirate. He carries his weapon openly, and 
gives notice of an attack. He respects the de- 
cencies of life, and does not strike below the 
belt, or creep down the back of your neck. But 
the black fly is at the bottom of the moral scale. 
He is an unmitigated ruffian, the plug-ugly of the 
woods. He looks like a tiny, immature house- 
fly, with white legs, as if he must be innocent. 
But, in fact, he crawls like a serpent and bites like 
a dog. No portion of the human frame is sacred 



AU LARGE 197 

from his greed. He takes his pound of flesh any- 
where, and does not scruple to take the blood 
with it. As a rule you can defend yourself against 
him, to some degree, by wearing a head-net, tying 
your sleeves around your wrists and your trou- 
sers around your ankles, and anointing your- 
self with grease, flavoured with pennyroyal, for 
which cleanly and honest scent he has a coarse 
aversion. But sometimes, especially on burned 
land, about the middle of a warm afternoon, when 
a rain is threatening, the horde of black flies de- 
scend in force and fury, knowing that their time 
is short. Then there is no escape. Suits of chain 
armour, Nubian ointments of far-smelling po- 
tency, would not save you. You must do as our 
guides did on the portage, submit to fate and 
walk along in heroic silence, like Marco Bozzaris, 
"bleeding at every pore" — or as Damon and I 
did, break into ejaculations and run until you 
reach a place where you can light a smudge and 
hold your head over it. 

" And yet," said my comrade, as we sat cough- 
ing and rubbing our eyes in the painful shelter of 
the smoke, " there are worse trials than this in 
the civilized districts : social enmities, and news- 
paper scandals, and religious persecutions. The 

blackest fly I ever saw is the Reverend " but 

here his voice was fortunately choked by a fit of 
coughing. 

A couple of wandering Indians— descendants of 



i 9 8 LITTLE RIVERS 

the Montagnais, on whose hunting domain we 
were travelling— dropped in at our camp that 
night as we sat around the fire. They gave us 
the latest news about the portages on our farther 
journey; how far they had been blocked with 
fallen trees, and whether the water was high or 
low in the rivers — just as a visitor at home would 
talk about the effect of the strikes on the stock- 
market, and the prospects of the newest organi- 
zation of the non-voting classes for the overthrow 
of Tammany Hall. Every phase of civilization 
or barbarism creates its own conversational cur- 
rency. The weather, like the old Spanish dollar, 
is the only coin that passes everywhere. 

But our Indians did not carry much small 
change about them. They were dark, silent 
chaps, soon talked out ; and then they sat sucking 
their pipes before the fire (as dumb as their own 
wooden effigies in front of a tobacconist's shop), 
until the spirit moved them, and they vanished in 
their canoe down the dark lake. Our own guides 
were very different. They were as full of conver- 
sation as a spruce-tree is of gum. When all shal- 
lower themes were exhausted they would discourse 
of bears and canoes and lumber and fish, forever. 
After Damon and I had left the fire and rolled 
ourselves in the blankets in our own tent, we 
could hear the men going on and on with their 
simple jests and endless tales of adventure, until 
sleep drowned their voices. 



AU LARGE 199 

It was the sound of a French chanson that woke 
us early on the morning of our departure from the 
Lake of the Bear. A gang of lumbermen were 
bringing a lot of logs through the lake. Half- 
hidden in the cold gray mist that usually betokens 
a fine day, and wet to the waist from splashing 
about after their unwieldy flock, these rough fel- 
lows were singing at their work as cheerfully as 
a party of robins in a cherry-tree at sunrise. It 
was like the miller and the two girls whom Words- 
worth saw dancing in their boats on the Thames : 

" They dance not for me, 
Yet mine is their glee ! 
Thus pleasure is spread through the earth 
In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find ; 
Thus a rich loving-kindness, redundantly kind, 
Moves all nature to gladness and mirth." 

But our later thoughts of the lumbermen were 
not altogether grateful, when we arrived that day, 
after a mile of portage, at the little Riviere 
Blanche, upon which we had counted to float us 
down to Lake Tchitagama, and found that they 
had stolen all the water to float their logs down 
the Lake of the Bear. The poor little river was 
as dry as a theological novel. There was noth- 
ing left of it except the bed and the bones ; it was 
like a Connecticut stream in the middle of Au- 
gust. All its pretty secrets were laid bare ; all 
its music was hushed. The pools that lingered 
among the rocks seemed like big tears ; and the 



2oo LITTLE RIVERS 

voice of the forlorn rivulets that trickled in here 
and there, seeking the parent stream, was a voice 
of weeping and complaint. 

For us the loss meant a hard day's work, scram- 
bling over slippery stones, and splashing through 
puddles, and forcing a way through the tangled 
thickets on the bank, instead of a pleasant two 
hours' run on a swift current. We ate our dinner 
on a sand-bank in what was once the middle of a 
pretty pond ; and entered, as the sun was sinking, 
a narrow wooded gorge between the hills, com- 
pletely filled by a chain of small lakes, where 
travelling became easy and pleasant. The steep 
shores, clothed with cedar and black spruce and 
dark-blue fir-trees, rose sheer from the water ; the 
passage from lake to lake was a tiny rapid a few 
yards long, gurgling through mossy rocks ; at the 
foot of the chain there was a longer rapid, with a 
portage beside it. We emerged from the dense 
bush suddenly and found ourselves face to face 
with Lake Tchitagama. 

How the heart expands at such a view! Nine 
miles of shining water lay stretched before us, 
opening through the mountains that guarded it 
on both sides with lofty walls of green and gray, 
ridge over ridge, point beyond point, until the 
vista ended in 

" Yon orange sunset waning slow." 
At a moment like this one feels a sense of exulta- 
tion. It is a new discovery of the joy of living. 



AU LARGE 201 

And yet, my friend and I confessed to each other, 
there was a tinge of sadness, an inexplicable re- 
gret mingled with our joy. Was it the thought 
of how few human eyes had ever seen that lovely 
vision? Was it the dim foreboding that we might 
never see it again? Who can explain the secret 
pathos of Nature's loveliness? It is a touch of 
melancholy inherited from our mother Eve. It 
is an unconscious memory of the lost Paradise. It 
is the sense that even if we should find another 
Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly, 
nor stay in it forever. 

Our first camp on Tchitagama was at the sun- 
rise end of the lake, in a bay paved with small 
round stones, laid close together and beaten firmly 
down by the waves. There, and along the shores 
below, at the mouth of a little river that foamed 
in over a ledge of granite, and in the shadow of 
cliffs of limestone and feldspar, we trolled and 
took many fish: pike of enormous size, fresh- 
water sharks, devourers of nobler game, fit only 
to kill and throw away ; huge old trout of six or 
seven pounds, with broad tails and hooked jaws, 
fine fighters and poor food ; stupid, wide-mouthed 
chub — ouitonche, the Indians call them — biting 
at hooks that were not baited for them ; and best 
of all, high-bred ouananiche, pleasant to capture 
and delicate to eat. 

Our second camp was on a sandy point at the 
sunset end of the lake — a fine place for bathing, 



202 LITTLE RIVERS 

and convenient to the wild meadows and blue- 
berry-patches, where Damon went to hunt for 
bears. He did not find any j but once he heard 
a great noise in the bushes, which he thought was 
a bear ; and he declared that he got quite as much 
excitement out of it as if it had had four legs and 
a mouthful of teeth. 

He brought back from one of his expeditions 
an Indian letter, which he had found in a cleft 
stick by the river. It was a sheet of birch-bark 
with a picture drawn on it in charcoal : five In- 
dians in a canoe paddling up the river, and one in 
another canoe pointing in another direction. We 
read it as a message left by a hunting-party, tell- 
ing their companions not to go on up the river, 
because it was already occupied, but to turn off on 
a side stream. 

There was a sign of a different kind nailed to 
an old stump behind our camp. It was the top 
of a soap-box, with an inscription after this fash- 
ion: 

AD. MEYER & B. LEVIT 

Soap Mfrs. N. Y. 

Camped here july 18 — 

i Trout 17% Pounds. II Ouan 

anisHes 18% Pounds. One 

Pike 147% lbs. 

There was a combination of piscatorial pride and 
mercantile enterprise in this quaint device that 
took our fancy. It suggested also a curious ques- 
tion of psychology in regard to the inhibitory in- 



AU LARGE 203 

fluence of horses and fish upon the human nerve 
of veracity. We named the place " Point Ana- 
nias." 

And yet, in fact, it was a wild and lonely spot, 
and not even the Hebrew inscription could spoil 
the sense of solitude that surrounded us when the 
night came, and the storm howled across the lake, 
and the darkness encircled us with a wall that 
only seemed the more dense and impenetrable as 
the firelight blazed and leaped within the black 
ring. 

"How far away is the nearest house, Johnny? " 
" I don't know; fifty miles, I suppose." 
" And what would you do if the canoes were 
burned, or if a tree fell and smashed them? " 

" Well, I'd say a Pater noster, and take bread 
and bacon enough for four days, and an axe, and 
plenty of matches, and make a straight line 
through the woods. But it wouldn't be a joke, 
m'sieu', I can tell you." 

The river Peribonca, into which Lake Tchita- 
gama flows without a break, is the noblest of all 
the streams that empty into Lake St. John. It 
is said to be more than three hundred miles long, 
and at the mouth of the lake it is perhaps a thou- 
sand feet wide, flowing with a deep, still current 
through the forest. The dead-water lasted for 
several miles ; then the river sloped into a rapid, 
spread through a net of islands, and broke over a 
ledge in a cataract. Another quiet stretch was 



204 LITTLE RIVERS 

followed by another fall, and so on, along the 
whole course of the river. 

We passed three of these falls in the first day's 
voyage (by portages so steep and rough that an 
Adirondack guide would have turned gray at the 
sight of them), and camped at night just below 
the Chute du Diable, where we found some oua- 
naniche in the foam. Our tents were on an islet, 
and all around we saw the primeval, savage 
beauty of a world unmarred by man. 

The river leaped, shouting, down its double 
stairway of granite, rejoicing like a strong man to 
run a race. The afterglow in the western sky 
deepened from saffron to violet among the tops 
of the cedars, and over the cliffs rose the moon- 
light, paling the heavens, but glorifying the earth. 
There was something large and generous and un- 
trammelled in the scene, recalling one of Walt 
Whitman's rhapsodies : 

" Earth of departed sunsets! Earth of the mountains misty- 
topped ! 
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with 

blue! 
Earth of shine and dark, mottling the tide of the river ! " 

All the next day we went down with the cur- 
rent. Regiments of black spruce stood in endless 
files like grenadiers, each tree capped with a thick 
tuft of matted cones and branches. Tall white 
birches leaned out over the stream, Narcissus-like, 



A U LARGE 205 

as if to see their own beauty in the moving mir- 
ror. There were touches of colour on the banks, 
the ragged pink flowers of the Joe-Pye-weed 
(which always reminds me of a happy, good- 
natured tramp), and the yellow ear-drops of the 
jewel-weed, and the intense blue of the closed 
gentian, that strange flower which, like a reticent 
heart, never opens to the light. Sometimes the 
river spread out like a lake, between high bluffs 
of sand fully a mile apart ; and again it divided 
into many channels, winding cunningly down 
among the islands as if it were resolved to slip 
around the next barrier of rock without a fall. 
There were eight of these huge natural dams in 
the course of that day's journey. Sometimes we 
followed one of the side canals, and made the por- 
tage at a distance from the main cataract; and 
sometimes we ran with the central current to the 
very brink of the chilte, darting aside just in time 
to escape going over. At the foot of the last fall 
we made our camp on a curving beach of sand, 
and spent the rest of the afternoon in fishing. 

It was interesting to see how closely the guides 
could guess at the weight of the fish by looking 
at them. The ouananiche are much longer in 
proportion to their weight than trout, and a nov- 
ice almost always overestimates them. But the 
guides were not deceived. " This one will weigh 
four pounds and three quarters, and this one four 
pounds, but that one not more than three pounds ; 



206 LITTLE RIVERS 

he is meagre, m'sieu', but he is meagre." When 
we went ashore and tried the spring-balance (which 
every angler ought to carry with him, as an aid to 
his conscience), the guides' guess usually proved 
to be within an ounce or two of the fact. Any one 
of the senses can be educated to do the work of 
the others. The eyes of these experienced fisher- 
men were as sensitive to weight as if they had 
been made to use as scales. 

Below the last fall the Peribonca flows for a 
score of miles with an unbroken, ever-widening 
stream, through low shores of forest and bush and 
meadow. Near its mouth the Little Peribonca 
joins it, and the immense flood, nearly two miles 
wide, pours into Lake St. John. Here we saw 
the first outpost of civilization — a huge unpainted 
storehouse, where supplies are kept for the lum- 
bermen and the new settlers. Here also we found 
the tiny, lame steam-launch that was to carry us 
back to the Hotel Roberval. Our canoes were 
stowed upon the roof of the cabin, and we em- 
barked for the last stage of our long journey. 

As we came out of the river-mouth the opposite 
shore of the lake was invisible, and a stiff "nor'- 
wester " was rolling big waves across the bar. It 
was like putting out into the open sea. The 
launch laboured and puffed along for four or five 
miles, growing more and more asthmatic with 
every breath. Then there was an explosion in 
the engine-room. Some necessary part of the 



AU LARGE 207 

intestinal machinery had blown out. There was 
a moment of confusion. The captain hurried to 
drop the anchor, and the narrow craft lay rolling 
in the billows. 

What to do? The captain shrugged his shoul- 
ders like a Frenchman. " Wait here, I suppose." 
But how long? " Who knows? Perhaps till to- 
morrow ; perhaps the day after. They will send 
another boat to look for us in the course of time." 

But the quarters were cramped ; the weather 
looked ugly ; if the wind should rise, the cranky 
launch would not be a safe cradle for the night. 
Damon and I preferred the canoes, for they at 
least would float if they were capsized. So we 
stepped into the frail, buoyant shells of bark once 
more, and danced over the big waves toward the 
shore. We made a camp on a wind-swept point 
of sand, and felt like shipwrecked mariners. But 
it was a gilt-edged shipwreck. For our larder 
was still full, and as if to provide us with the lux- 
uries as well as the necessities of life, Nature had 
spread an inexhaustible dessert of the largest and 
most luscious blueberries around our tents. 

After supper, strolling along the beach, we de- 
bated the best way of escape; whether to send 
one of our canoes around the eastern shore of the 
lake that night, to meet the steamer at the Island 
House and bring it to our rescue ; or to set out 
the next morning, and paddle both canoes around 
the western end of the lake, thirty miles, to the 



zo8 LITTLE RIVERS 

Hotel Roberval. While we were talking we came 
to a dry old birch-tree, with ragged, curling bark. 
" Here is atorch," cried Damon, " to throw light 
upon the situation." He touched a match to it, 
and the flames flashed up the tall trunk until it was 
transformed into a pillar of fire. But the sudden 
illumination burned out, and our counsels were 
wrapped again in darkness and uncertainty, when 
there came a great uproar of steam-whistles from 
the lake. They must be signalling for us. What 
could it mean? 

We fired our guns, leaped into a canoe, leaving 
two of the guides to break camp, and paddled out 
swiftly into the night. It seemed an endless dis- 
tance before we found the feeble light where the 
crippled launch was tossing at anchor. The cap- 
tain shouted something about a larger steamboat 
and a raft of logs, out in the lake, a mile or two 
beyond. Presently we saw the lights, and the 
orange glow of the cabin windows. Was she 
coming, or going, or standing still? We pad- 
dled on as fast as we could, shouting and firing 
off a revolver until we had no more cartridges. 
We were resolved not to let that mysterious ves- 
sel escape us, and threw ourselves with energy 
into the novel excitement of chasing a steamboat 
in the dark. 

Then the lights began to swing around; the 
throbbing of paddle-wheels grew louder and 
louder ; she was evidently coming straight toward 



AU LARGE 209 

us. At that moment it flashed upon us that, while 
she had plenty of lights, we had none ! We were 
lying, invisible, right across her track. The char- 
acter of the steamboat chase was reversed. We 
turned and fled, as the guides say, a quatre pattes, 
into illimitable space, trying to get out of the way 
of our too powerful friend. It makes consider- 
able difference, in the voyage of life, whether you 
chase the steamboat, or the steamboat chases you. 

Meantime our other canoe had approached un- 
seen. The steamer passed safely between the two 
boats, slackening speed as the pilot caught our loud 
halloo ! She loomed up above us like a man-of-war, 
and as we climbed the ladder to the main deck we 
felt that we had indeed gotten out of the wilder- 
ness. My old friend, Captain Savard, made us 
welcome. He had been sent out, much to his dis- 
gust, to catch a runaway boom of logs and tow it 
back to Roberval ; it would be an all-night affair ; 
but we must take possession of his state-room and 
make ourselves comfortable ; he would certainly 
bring us to the hotel in time for breakfast. So 
he went off on the upper deck, and we heard him 
stamping about and yelling to his crew as they 
struggled to get their unwieldy drove of six thou- 
sand logs in motion. 

All night long we assisted at the lumbermen's 
difficult enterprise. We heard the steamer snort- 
ing and straining at her clumsy, stubborn convoy. 
The hoarse shouts of the crew, disguised in a 



2io LITTLE RIVERS 

mongrel dialect which made them (perhaps fortu- 
nately) less intelligible and more forcible, mingled 
with our broken dreams. 

But it was, in fact, a fitting close of our voy- 
age. For what were we doing? It was the last 
stage of the woodman's labour. It was the gath- 
ering of a wild herd of the houses and churches 
and ships and bridges that grow in the forests, 
and bringing them into the fold of human service. 
I wonder how often the inhabitant of the snug 
Queen Anne cottage in the suburbs remembers the 
picturesque toil and varied hardship that it has 
cost to hew and drag his walls and floors and 
pretty peaked roofs out of the backwoods. It 
might enlarge his home, and make his musings 
by the winter fireside less commonplace, to give 
a kindly thought now and then to the long chain 
of human workers through whose hands the tim- 
ber of his house has passed since it first felt the 
stroke of the axe in the snow-bound winter woods, 
and floated, through the spring and summer, on 
far-off lakes and little rivers, au large. 



TROUT-FISHING IN THE TRAUN 



?&ps? 



TJiose who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to ab- 
sent th-emselves for a time fro7n the ties and objects that 
recall them; but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny 
in the place that gave us birth. I should on this account 
like well enough to spend the whole of my life in travel- 
ling abroad, if I could anywhere borrow anotJur life to 
spend afterward at home." — William Hazlitt: On 
Going a Journey. 





TROUT-FISHING IN THE TRAUN 



HE peculiarity of trout-fishing in the 
Traun is that one catches principally 
grayling. But in this it resembles 
some other pursuits which are not 
without their charm for minds open to the pleas- 
ures of the unexpected — for example, reading 
George Borrow's Bible in Spain with a view to 
theological information, or going to the opening 
night at the Academy of Design with the intention 
of looking at pictures. 

Moreover, there are really trout in the Traun, 
rari nantes in gurgite ; and in some places more 
than in others ; and all of high spirit, though few 
of great size. Thus the angler has his favourite 
problem: Given an unknown stream and two 
kinds of fish, the one better than the other ; to 
find the better kind, and determine the hour at 
which they will rise. This is sport. 

As for the little river itself, it has so many beau- 



2i 4 LITTLE RIVERS 

ties that one does not think of asking whether it 
has any faults. Constant fulness, and crystal 
clearness, and refreshing coolness of living water, 
pale green like the jewel that is called aqua ma- 
rina, flowing over beds of clean sand and bars of 
polished gravel, and dropping in momentary foam 
from rocky ledges, between banks that are shaded 
by groves of fir and ash and poplar, or through 
dense thickets of alder and willow, or across 
meadows of smooth verdure sloping up to quaint 
Old World villages — all these are features of the 
ideal little river. 

I have spoken of these personal qualities first, 
because a truly moral writer ought to make more 
of character than of position. A good river in a 
bad country would be more worthy of affection 
than a bad river in a good country. But the 
Traun has also the advantages of an excellent 
worldly position. For it rises all over the Salz- 
kammergut, the summer hunting-ground of the 
Austrian Emperor, and flows through that most 
picturesque corner of his domain from end to end. 
Under the desolate cliffs of the Todtengebirge on 
the east, and below the shining ice-fields of the 
Dachstein on the south, and from the green alps 
around St. Wolfgang on the west, the translucent 
waters are gathered in little tarns, and shot 
through roaring brooks, and spread into lakes of 
wondrous beauty, and poured through growing 
streams, until at last they are all united just be- 



THE TRAUN 215 

low the summer villa of His Kaiserly and Kingly 
Majesty, Francis Joseph, and flow away north- 
ward, through the rest of his game-preserve, into 
the Traunsee. It is an imperial playground, and 
such as I would consent to hunt the chamois in, 
if an inscrutable Providence had made me a kingly 
kaiser, or even a plain king or an unvarnished 
kaiser. But, failing this, I was perfectly content 
to spend a few idle days in fishing for trout and 
catching grayling, at such times and places as the 
law of the Austrian Empire allowed. 

For it must be remembered that every stream 
in these over-civilized European countries belongs 
to somebody, by purchase or rent. And all the 
fish in the stream are supposed to belong to the 
person who owns or rents it. They do not know 
their master's voice, neither will they follow when 
he calls. But they are theoretically his. To this 
legal fiction the untutored American must con- 
form. He must learn to clothe his natural desires 
in the raiment of lawful sanction, and take out 
some kind of a license before he follows his im- 
pulse to fish. 

It was in the town of Aussee, at the junction of 
the two highest branches of the Traun, that this 
impulse came upon me, mildly irresistible. The 
full bloom of mid-July gayety in that ancient wa- 
tering-place was dampened, but not extinguished, 
by two days of persistent and surprising showers. 
I had exhausted the possibilities of interest in the 



2i6 LITTLE RIVERS 

old Gothic church, and felt all that a man should 
feel in deciphering the mural tombstones of the 
families who were exiled for their faith in the days 
of the Reformation. The throngs of merry He- 
brews from Vienna and Buda-Pesth, amazingly 
arrayed as mountaineers and milkmaids, walking 
up and down the narrow streets under umbrellas, 
had Cleopatra's charm of an infinite variety ; but 
custom staled it. The woodland paths, winding 
everywhere through the plantations of fir-trees, 
and provided with appropriate names on wooden 
labels, and benches for rest and conversation at 
discreet intervals, were too moist -for even the 
nymphs to take delight in them. The only crea- 
tures that suffered nothing by the rain were the 
two swift, limpid Trauns, racing through the 
woods, like eager and unabashed lovers, to meet 
in the middle of the village. They were as clear, 
as joyous, as musical as if the sun were shining. 
The very sight of their opalescent rapids and ed- 
dying pools was an invitation to that gentle sport 
which is said to have the merit of growing better 
as the weather grows worse. 

I laid this fact before the landlord of the Hotel 
of the Erzherzog Johann as poetically as I could, 
but he assured me that it was of no consequence 
without an invitation from the gentleman to whom 
the streams belonged, and he had gone away for 
a week. The landlord was such a good-natured 
person, and such an excellent sleeper, that it was 



THE TRAUN 217 

impossible to believe that he could have even the 
smallest inaccuracy upon his conscience. So I 
bade him farewell, and took my way, four miles 
through the woods, to the lake from which one of 
the streams flowed. 

It was called the Griindlsee. As I do not 
know the origin of the name, I cannot consistently 
make any moral or historical reflections upon it. 
But if it has never become famous, it ought to be, 
for the sake of a cozy and busy little inn, perched 
on a green hill beside the lake, and overlooking 
the whole length of it, from the groups of toy vil- 
las at the foot to the heaps of real mountains at 
the head. This inn kept a thin but happy land- 
lord, who provided me with a blue license to an- 
gle, for the inconsiderable sum of fifteen cents a 
day. This conferred the right of fishing not only 
in the Griindlsee, but also in the smaller tarn of 
Toplitz, a mile above it, and in the swift stream 
which united them. It all coincided with my de- 
sire as if by magic. A row of a couple of miles 
to the head of the lake, and a walk through the 
forest, brought me to the smaller pond; and as 
the afternoon sun was ploughing pale furrows 
through the showers, I waded out on a point of 
reeds and cast the artful fly in the shadow of the 
great cliffs of the Dead Mountains. 

It was a fit scene for a lone fisherman. But 
four sociable tourists promptly appeared to act as 
spectators and critics. Fly-fishing usually strikes 



2x8 LITTLE RIVERS 

the German mind as an eccentricity which calls 
for remonstrance. After one of the tourists had 
suggestively narrated the tale of seven trout which 
he had caught in another lake, with zvorms, on the 
previous Sunday, they went away for a row (with 
salutations in which politeness but thinly veiled 
their pity), and left me still whipping the water 
in vain. Nor was the fortune of the day much 
better in the stream below. It was a long and 
wet wade for three fish too small to keep. I came 
out on the shore of the lake, where I had left the 
rovvboat, with an empty bag and a feeling of damp 
discouragement. 

There was still an hour or so of daylight, and 
a beautiful place to fish where the stream poured 
swirling out into the lake. A rise, and a large 
one, though rather slow, awakened my hopes. 
Another rise, evidently made by a heavy fish, 
made me certain that virtue was about to be re- 
warded. The third time the hook went home. I 
felt the solid weight of the fish against the spring 
of the rod, and that curious thrill which runs up 
the line and down the arm, changing, somehow 
or other, into a pleasurable sensation of excite- 
ment as it reaches the brain. But it was only for 
a moment ; and then came that foolish, feeble 
shaking of the line from side to side which tells 
the angler that he has hooked a great, big, leather- 
mouthed chub— a fish which Izaak Walton says 
" the French esteem so mean as to call him Un 



THE TRAUN 219 

Vilain." Was it for this that I had come to the 
country of Francis Joseph? 

I took off the flies and put on one of those 
phantom minnows which have immortalized the 
name of a certain Mr. Brown. It swung on a 
long line as the boat passed back and forth across 
the current, once, twice, three times ; and on the 
fourth circle there was a sharp strike. The rod 
bent almost double, and the reel sang shrilly to 
the first rush of the fish. He ran ; he doubled ; 
he went to the bottom and sulked; he tried to go 
under the boat ; he did all that a game-fish can do, 
except leaping. After twenty minutes he was 
tired enough to be lifted gently into the boat by 
a hand slipped around his gills, and there he was, 
a Lacks/ore lie of three pounds' weight : small 
pointed head, silver sides mottled with dark spots, 
square, powerful tail, and large fins — a fish not 
unlike the land-locked salmon of the Saguenay, 
but more delicate. 

Half an hour later he was lying on the grass in 
front of the inn. The waiters paused, with their 
hands full of dishes, to look at him ; and the land- 
lord called his guests, including my didactic tour- 
ists, to observe the superiority of the trout of the 
Grundlsee. The maids also came to look; and 
the buxom cook, with her spotless apron and bare 
arms akimbo, was drawn from her kitchen, and 
pledged her culinary honour that such a Pracht- 
kerl should be served up in her very best style. 



22o LITTLE RIVERS 

The angler who is insensible to this sort of indi- 
rect flattery through his fish does not exist. Even 
the most indifferent of men thinks more favour- 
ably of people who know a good trout when they 
see it, and sits down to his supper with kindly 
feelings. Possibly he reflects, also, upon the in- 
cident as a hint of the usual size of the fish in that 
neighbourhood. He remembers that he may 
have been favoured in this case beyond his deserts 
by good fortune, and resolving not to put too 
heavy a strain upon it, considers the next place 
where it would be well for him to angle. 

Hallstatt is about ten miles below Aussee. The 
Traun here expands into a lake, very dark and 
deep, shut in by steep and lofty mountains. The 
railway runs along the eastern shore. On the 
other side, a mile away, you see the old town, its 
white houses clinging to the cliff like lichens to 
the face of a rock. The guide-book calls it " a 
highly original situation." But this is one of the 
cases where a little less originality and a little 
more reasonableness might be desired, at least by 
the permanent inhabitants. A ledge under the 
shadow of a precipice makes a trying winter resi- 
dence. The people of Hallstatt are not a bloom- 
ing race: one sees many dwarfs and cripples 
among them. But to the summer traveller the 
place seems wonderfully picturesque. Most of 
the streets are flights of steps. The high road 
has barely room to edge itself through among the 



THE TRAUN 221 

old houses, between the window- gardens of bright 
flowers. On the hottest July day the afternoon 
is cool and shady. The gay little skiffs and long, 
open gondolas are flitting continually along the 
lake, which is the main street of Hallstatt. 

The incongruous but comfortable modern hotel 
has a huge glass veranda, where you can eat your 
dinner and observe human nature in its transpa- 
rent holiday disguises. I was much pleased and 
entertained by a family, or confederacy, of people 
attired as peasants — the men with feathered hats, 
green stockings, and bare knees, the women with 
bright skirts, bodices, and silk neckerchiefs — who 
were always in evidence, rowing gondolas with 
clumsy oars, meeting the steamboat at the wharf 
several times a day, and filling the miniature gar- 
den of the hotel with rustic greetings and early 
Salzkammergut attitudes. After much conjec- 
ture, I learned that they were the family and 
friends of a newspaper editor from Vienna. They 
had the literary instinct for local colour. 

The fishing at Hallstatt is at Obertraun. There 
is a level stretch of land above the lake, where the 
river flows peaceably and the fish have leisure to 
feed and grow. It is leased to a peasant who 
makes a business of supplying the hotels with 
fish. He was quite willing to give permission to 
an angler ; and I engaged one of his sons, a capi- 
tal young fellow whose natural capacities for good 
fellowship were only hampered by a most ex- 



222 LITTLE RIVERS 

traordinary German dialect, to row me across the 
lake and carry the net and a small green barrel 
full of water to keep the fish alive, according to 
the custom of the country. The first day we had 
only four trout large enough to put into the bar- 
rel; the next day, I think, there were six; the 
third day, I remember very well, there were ten. 
They were pretty creatures, weighing from half a 
pound to a pound each, and coloured as daintily 
as bits of French silk, in silver gray with faint 
pink spots. 

There was plenty to do at Hallstatt in the morn- 
ings. An hour's walk from the town there was 
a fine waterfall three hundred feet high. On the 
side of the mountain above the lake was one of 
the salt-mines for which the region is celebrated. 
It has been worked for ages by many successive 
races, from the Celt downward. Perhaps even 
the men of the stone age knew of it, and came 
hither for seasoning to make the flesh of the cave- 
bear and the mammoth more palatable. Modern 
pilgrims are permitted to explore the long, wet, 
glittering galleries with a guide, and slide down 
the smooth wooden rollers which join the differ- 
ent levels of the mines. This pastime has the 
same fascination as sliding down the balusters, 
and it is said that even queens and princesses have 
been delighted with it. This is a touching proof 
of the fundamental simplicity and unity of our 
human nature. 



THE TRAUN 223 

But by far the best excursion from Hallstatt 
was an all-day trip to the Zwieselalp— a mountain 
which seems to have been especially created as a 
point of view. From the bare summit you look 
right into the face of the huge, snowy Dachstein, 
with the wild Lake of Gosau gleaming at its foot ; 
and far away on the other side your vision ranges 
over a confusion of mountains, with all the white 
peaks of the Tyrol stretched along the horizon. 
Such a wide outlook as this helps the fisherman 
to enjoy the narrow beauties of his little rivers. 
No sport is at its best without interruption and 
contrast. To appreciate wading, one ought to 
climb a little on odd days. 

Ischl is about ten or twelve miles below Hall- 
statt, in the valley of the Traun. It is the fash- 
ionable summer resort of Austria. I found it in 
the high tide of amusement. The shady espla- 
nade along the river was crowded with brave 
women and fair men in gorgeous raiment; the 
hotels were overflowing ; and there were various 
kinds of music and entertainments at all hours of 
day and night. But all this did not seem to affect 
the fishing. 

The landlord of the Konigin Elizabeth, who is 
also the burgomaster and a gentleman of varied 
accomplishments and no leisure, kindly furnished 
me with a fishing license in the shape of a large 
pink card. There were many rules printed upon 
it: "All fishes under nine inches must be gently 



224 LITTLE RIVERS 

restored to the water. No instrument of capture 
must be used except the angle in the hand. The 
card of legitimation must be produced and exhib- 
ited at the polite request of any of the keepers of 
the river." Thus duly authorized and instructed, 
I sallied forth to seek my pastime according to 
the law. 

The easiest way, in theory, was to take the af- 
ternoon train up the river to one of the villages, 
and fish down a mile or two in the evening, re- 
turning by the eight-o'clock train. But in prac- 
tice the habits of the fish interfered seriously with 
the latter part of this plan. 

On my first day I had spent several hours in 
the vain effort to catch something better than 
small grayling. The best time for the trout was 
just approaching, as the broad light faded from 
the stream ; already they were beginning to feed, 
when I looked up from the edge of the pool and 
saw the train rattling down the valley below me. 
Under the circumstances the only thing to do was 
to go on fishing. It was an even pool with steep 
banks, and the water ran through it very straight 
and swift, some four feet deep and thirty yards 
across. As the tail-fly reached the middle of the 
water, a fine trout literally turned a somersault 
over it, but without touching it. At the next 
cast he was ready, taking it with a rush that car- 
ried him into the air with the fly in his mouth. 
He weighed three quarters of a pound. The next 



THE TRAUN 225 

one was equally eager in rising and sharp in play- 
ing, and the third might have been his twin sister 
or brother. So, after casting for hours and tak- 
ing nothing in the most beautiful pools, I landed 
three trout from one unlikely place in fifteen min- 
utes. That was because the trout's supper-time 
had arrived. So had mine. I walked over to the 
rambling old inn at Goisern, sought the cook in 
the kitchen, and persuaded her, in spite of the 
lateness of the hour, to boil the largest of the fish 
for my supper, after which I rode peacefully back 
to Ischl by the eleven-o'clock train. 

For the future I resolved to give up the illusory 
idea of coming home by rail, and ordered a little 
one-horse carriage to meet me at some point on 
the high road every evening at nine o'clock. In 
this way I managed to cover the whole stream, 
taking a lower part each day, from the lake of 
Hallstatt down to Ischl. 

There was one part of the river, near Laufen, 
where the current was very strong and waterfally, 
broken by ledges of rock. Below these it rested 
in long, smooth reaches, much beloved by the 
grayling. There was no difficulty in getting two 
or three of them out of each run. 

The grayling has a quaint beauty. His ap- 
pearance is aesthetic, like a fish in a pre-Raphael- 
ite picture. His colour in midsummer is a golden 
gray, darker on the back, and with a few black 
spots just behind his gills, like patches put on to 



226 LITTLE RIVERS 

bring out the pallor of his complexion. He smells 
of wild thyme when he first comes out of the wa- 
ter, wherefore St. Ambrose of Milan compli- 
mented him in courtly fashion : ' ' Quid specie tua 
gratius? Quid odore fragrantius ? Quod me I la 
fragrant, hoc tuo corpore spiras." But the chief 
glory of the grayling is the large iridescent fin on 
his back. You see it cutting the water as he 
swims near the surface, and when you have him 
on the bank it arches over him like a rainbow. 
His mouth is under his chin, and he takes the fly 
gently, by suction. He is, in fact, and to speak 
plainly, something of a sucker ; but then he is a 
sucker idealized and refined, the flower of the 
family. Charles Cotton, the ingenious young 
friend of Walton, was all wrong in calling the 
grayling " one of the deadest-hearted fishes in 
the world." He fights and leaps and whirls, and 
brings his big fin to bear across the force of the 
current with a variety of tactics that would put 
his more aristocratic fellow-citizen, the trout, to 
the blush. Twelve of these pretty fellows, with 
a brace of good trout for the top, filled my big 
creel to the brim. And yet such is the inborn 
hypocrisy of the human heart that I always pre- 
tended to myself to be disappointed because there 
were not more trout, and made light of the gray- 
ling as a thing of naught. 

T.he pink fishing license did not seem to be of 
much use. Its exhibition was demanded only 



THE TRAUN 227 

twice. Once a river guardian, who was walking 
down the stream with a Belgian baron and en- 
couraging him to continue fishing, climbed out to 
me on the end of a long embankment, and with 
proper apologies begged to be favoured with a 
view of my document. It turned out that his re- 
quest was a favour to me, for it discovered the 
fact that I had left my fly-book, with the pink card 
in it, beside an old mill a quarter of a mile up the 
stream. 

Another time I was sitting beside the road, try- 
ing to get out of a very long, wet, awkward pair 
of wading-stockings, an occupation which is un- 
favourable to tranquillity of mind, when a man 
came up to me in the dusk, and accosted me 
with an absence of politeness which in German 
amounted to an insult. 

" Have you been fishing? " 

" Why do you want to know? " 

" Have you any right to fish? " 

" What right have you to ask? " 

' ' I am a keeper of the river. Where is your 
card? " 

" It is in my pocket. But, pardon my curios- 
ity, where is your card? " 

This question appeared to paralyze him. He 
had probably never been asked for his card be- 
fore. He went lumbering off in the darkness, 
muttering, " My card! Unheard of ! My card!" 

The routine of angling at Ischl was varied by 



228 LITTLE RIVERS 

an excursion to the Lake of St. Wolfgang and the 
Schafberg, an isolated mountain on whose rocky 
horn an inn has been built. It stands up almost 
like a bird-house on a pole, and commands a su- 
perb prospect — northward across the rolling plain 
and the Bavarian forest, southward over a tumul- 
tuous land of peaks and precipices. There are 
many lovely lakes in sight, but the loveliest of all 
is that which takes its name from the old saint 
who wandered hither from the country of the 
" furious Franks " and built his peaceful hermi- 
tage on the Falkenstein. What good taste some 
of those old saints had! 

There is a venerable church in the village, with 
pictures attributed to Michael Wohlgemuth, and 
a chapel which is said to mark the spot where St. 
Wolfgang, who had lost his axe far up the moun- 
tain, found it, like Longfellow's arrow, in an oak, 
and " still unbroke." The tree is gone, so it was 
impossible to verify the story. But the saint's 
well is there, in a pavilion, with a bronze image 
over it, and a profitable inscription to the effect 
that the poorer pilgrims, " who have come un- 
provided with either money or wine, should be 
jolly well contented to find the water so fine." 
There is also a famous echo farther up the lake, 
which repeats six syllables with accuracy. It is 
a strange coincidence that there are just six syl- 
lables in the name of " der heilige Wolfgang." 
But when you translate it into English the inspi- 



THE TRAUN 



229 



ration of the echo seems to be less exact. The 
sweetest thing about St. Wolfgang was the abun- 
dance of purple cyclamens clothing the mountain 
meadows and filling the air with delicate fragrance 
like the smell of lilacs around a New England 
farm-house in early June. 

There was still one stretch of the river above 
Ischl left for the last evening's sport. I remem- 
ber it so well : the long, deep place where the wa- 
ter ran beside an embankment of stone, and the 
big grayling poised on the edge of the shadow, 
rising and falling on the current as a kite rises 
and falls on the wind and balances back to the 
same position ; the murmur of the stream and the 
hissing of the pebbles underfoot in the rapids as 
the swift water rolled them over and over ; the 
odour of the fir-trees, and the streaks of warm air 
in quiet places, and the faint whiffs of wood-smoke 
wafted from the houses, and the brown flies danc- 
ing heavily up and down in the twilight ; the last 
good pool, where the river was divided, the main 
part making a deep, narrow curve to the right, 
and the lesser part bubbling into it over a bed of 
stones with half a dozen tiny waterfalls, with a 
fine trout lying at the foot of each of them and 
rising merrily as the white fly passed over him — 
surely it was all very good, and a memory to be 
grateful for. And when the basket was full, it 
was pleasant to put off the heavy wading-shoes 
and the long rubber stockings, and ride home- 



2 3 o LITTLE RIVERS 

ward in an open carriage through the fresh night 
air. That is as near to sybaritic luxury as a man 
should care to come. 

The lights in the cottages are twinkling like 
fireflies, and there are small groups of people 
singing and laughing down the road. The hon- 
est fisherman reflects that this world is only a 
place of pilgrimage, but after all there is a good 
deal of cheer on the journey, if it is made with a 
contented heart. He wonders who the dwellers 
in the scattered houses may be, and weaves ro- 
mances out of the shadows on the curtained win- 
dows. The lamps burning in the wayside shrines 
tell him stories of human love and patience and 
hope, and of divine forgiveness. Dream-pictures 
of life float before him, tender and luminous, filled 
with a vague, soft atmosphere in which the sim- 
plest outlines gain a strange significance. They 
are like some of Millet's paintings, "The Sow- 
er" or " The Sheepfold "—there is very little de- 
tail in them ; but sometimes a little means so 
much. 

Then the moon slips up into the sky from be- 
hind the eastern hills, and the fisherman begins 
to think of home, and of the foolish, fond old 
rhymes about those whom the moon sees far 
away, and the stars that have the power to fulfil 
wishes as if the celestial bodies knew or cared 
anything about our small nerve-thrills which we 
call affection and desires! But if there were 



THE TRAUN 231 

Some One above the moon and stars who did know 
and care, Some One who could see the places and 
the people that you and I would give so much to 
see, Some One who could do for them all of kind- 
ness that you and I fain would do, Some One 
able to keep our beloved in perfect peace and 
watch over the little children sleeping in their 
beds beyond the sea — what then? Why, then 
in the evening hour one might have thoughts of 
home that would go across the ocean by way of 
heaven, and be better than dreams, almost as good 
as prayers. 



AT THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM- 
BOUGH 



jsskk 




" Come live with me, and be my love, 
And we will all the pleasures prove 
That valleys, groves, or hills, or field, 
Or woods andsteepy mountains yield. 

" There we will rest our sleepy heads, 
And happy hearts, on balsam-beds; 
A nd every day go forth to fish 
In foamy streams for ouananiche." 

Old Song with a New Ending. 



AT THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM- 
BOUGH 






T has been asserted, on high philosoph- 
ical authority, that woman is a prob- 
lem. She is more ; she is a cause of 
problems to others. This is not a 
theoretical statement. It is a fact of experience. 
Every year, when the sun passes the summer 
solstice, the 

" Two souls with but a single thought," 

of whom I am so fortunate as to be one, are sum- 
moned by that portion of our united mind which 
has at once the right of putting the question and 
of casting the deciding vote, to answer this conun- 
drum : How can we go abroad without crossing 
the ocean, and abandon an interesting family of 
children without getting completely beyond their 
reach, and escape from the frying-pan of house- 
keeping without falling into the fire of the sum- 



236 LITTLE RIVERS 

mer hotel? This apparently insoluble problem 
we usually solve by going to camp in Canada. 

It is indeed a foreign air that breathes around 
us as we make the harmless, friendly voyage from 
Point Levis to Quebec. The boy on the ferry- 
boat, who cajoles us into buying a copy of Le 
Moniteur containing last month's news, has the 
address of a true though diminutive Frenchman. 
The landlord of the quiet little inn on the out- 
skirts of the town welcomes us with Gallic effu- 
sion as well-known guests, and rubs his hands 
genially before us while he escorts us to our apart- 
ments, groping secretly in his memory to recall 
our names. When we walk down the steep, 
quaint streets to revel in the purchase of mocca- 
sins and waterproof coats and camping supplies, 
we read on a wall the familiar but transformed 
legend, " V enfant pleurs, ilveut son Camphoria" 
and remember with joy that no infant who weeps 
in French can impose any responsibility upon us 
in these days of our renewed honeymoon. 

But the true delight of the expedition begins 
when the tents have been set up in the forest back 
of Lake St. John, and the green branches have 
been broken for the woodland bed, and the fire 
has been lit under the open sky, and, the livery 
of fashion being all discarded, I sit down at a log 
table to eat supper with my lady Graygown. 
Then life seems simple and amiable and well 
worth living. Then the uproar and confusion of 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 237 

the world die away from us, and we hear only the 
steady murmur of the river and the low voice of 
the wind in the tree-tops. Then time is long, and 
the only art that is needful for its enjoyment is 
short and easy. Then we taste true comfort, 
while we lodge with Mother Green at the Sign 
of the Balsam-bough. 

I 

UNDER THE WHITE BIRCHES 

Men may say what they will in praise of their 
houses, and grow eloquent upon the merits of va- 
rious styles of architecture, but, for our part, we 
are agreed that there is nothing to be compared 
with a tent. It is the most venerable and aristo- 
cratic form of human habitation. Abraham and 
Sarah lived in it, and shared its hospitality with 
angels. It is exempt from the base tyranny of 
the plumber, the paper-hanger, and the gas-man. 
It is not immovably bound to one dull spot of 
earth by the chains of a cellar and a system of 
water-pipes. It has a noble freedom of locomo- 
tion. It follows the wishes of its inhabitants, and 
goes with them, a travelling home, as the spirit 
moves them to explore the wilderness. At their 
pleasure, new beds of wild flowers surround it, 
new plantations of trees overshadow it, and new 
avenues of shining water lead to its ever-open 
door. What the tent lacks in luxury it makes up 



238 LITTLE RIVERS 

in liberty; or rather let us say that liberty itself 
is the greatest luxury. 

Another thing is worth remembering : a family 
which lives in a tent never can have a skeleton in 
the closet. 

But it must not be supposed that every spot in 
the woods is suitable for a camp, or that a good 
tenting-ground can be chosen without knowledge 
and forethought. One of the requisites, indeed, 
is to be found everywhere in the St. John region ; 
for all the lakes and rivers are full of clear, cool 
water, and the traveller does not need to search 
for a spring. But it is always necessary to look 
carefully for a bit of smooth ground on the shore, 
far enough above the water to be dry, and slightly 
sloping, so that the head of the bed may be higher 
than the foot. Above all, it must be free from 
big stones and serpentine roots of trees. A root 
that looks no bigger than an inchworm in the 
daytime assumes the proportions of a boa-con- 
strictor at midnight — when you find it under your 
hip-bone. There should also be plenty of ever- 
greens near at hand for the beds. Spruce will 
answer at a pinch ; it has an aromatic smell; but 
it is too stiff and humpy. Hemlock is smoother 
and more flexible, but the spring soon wears out 
of it. The balsam-fir, with its elastic branches 
and thick flat needles, is the best of all. A bed 
of these boughs a foot deep is softer than a mat- 
tress and as fragrant as a thousand Christmas 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 239 

trees. Two things more are needed for the ideal 
camp -ground— an open situation, where the 
breeze will drive away the flies and mosquitoes, 
and an abundance of dry fire-wood within easy 
reach. Yes, and a third thing must not be for- 
gotten ; for, says my lady Graygown : 

" I shouldn't feel at home in camp unless I 
could sit in the door of the tent and look out 
across flowing water." 

All these conditions are met in our favourite 
camping-place below the first fall in the Grande 
Decharge. A rocky point juts out into the river 
and makes a fine landing for the canoes. There 
is a dismantled fishing-cabin a few rods back in 
the woods, from which we can borrow boards for 
a table and chairs. A group of cedars on the 
lower edge of the point opens just wide enough 
to receive and shelter our tent. At a good dis- 
tance beyond ours the guides' tent is pitched ; and 
the big camp-fire burns between the two dwell- 
ings. A pair of white birches lift their leafy 
crowns far above us, and after them we name the 
place Le Camp aux Bouleaux. 

"Why not call trees people? — since, if you 
come to live among them year after year, you 
will learn to know many of them personally, and 
an attachment will grow up between you and 
them individually." So writes that Doctor Ama- 
bilis of woodcraft, W. C. Prime, in his book, 
Among the Northern Hills, and straightway 



24 o LITTLE RIVERS 

launches forth into eulogy on the white birch. 
And truly it is an admirable, lovable, and com- 
fortable tree, beautiful to look upon and full of 
various uses. Its wood is strong to make pad- 
dles and axe-handles, and glorious to burn, blaz- 
ing up at first with a flashing flame, and then 
holding the fire in its glowing heart all through 
the night. Its bark is the most serviceable of all 
the products of the wilderness. In Russia, they 
say, it is used in tanning, and gives its subtle, 
sacerdotal fragrance to Russia leather. But here 
in the woods it serves more primitive ends. It 
can be peeled off in a huge roll from some giant 
tree and fashioned into a swift canoe to carry man 
over the waters. It can be cut into square sheets 
to roof his shanty in the forest. It is the paper 
on which he writes his woodland dispatches, and 
the flexible material which he bends into drink- 
ing-cups of silver lined with gold. A thin strip 
of it wrapped around the end of a candle and fas- 
tened in a cleft stick makes a practicable chande- 
lier. A basket for berries, a horn to call the 
love-lorn moose through the autumnal woods, a 
canvas on which to draw the outline of great and 
memorable fish — all these and many other indis- 
pensable luxuries are stored up for the skilful 
woodsman in the birch bark. 

Only do not rob or mar the tree unless you 
really need what it has to give you. Let it stand 
and grow in virgin majesty, ungirdled and un- 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 241 

scarred, while the trunk becomes a firm pillar of 
the forest temple, and the branches spread abroad 
a refuge of bright-green leaves for the birds of 
the air. Nature never made a more excellent 
piece of handiwork. "And if," said my lady 
Graygown, " I should ever become a Dryad, I 
would choose to be transformed into a white 
birch. And then, when the days of my life were 
numbered, and the sap had ceased to flow, and 
the last leaf had fallen, and the dry bark hung 
around me in ragged curls and streamers, some 
wandering hunter would come in the wintry night 
and touch a lighted coal to my body, and my spir- 
it would flash up in a fiery chariot into the sky." 

The chief occupation of our idle days on the 
Grande D£charge was fishing. Above the camp 
spread, a noble pool, more than two miles in cir- 
cumference, and diversified with smooth bays and 
whirling eddies, sand-beaches and rocky islands. 
The river poured into it at the head, foaming and 
raging down a long ckUte, and swept out of it 
just in front of our camp in a merry, musical 
rapid. It was full of fish of various kinds — long- 
nosed pickerel, wall-eyed pike, and stupid chub. 
But the prince of the pool was the fighting oua- 
naniche, the little salmon of St. John. 

Here let me chant thy praise, thou noblest and 
most high-minded fish, the cleanest feeder, the 
merriest liver, the loftiest leaper, and the bravest 
warrior of all creatures that swim! Thy cousin, 



242 LITTLE RIVERS 

the trout, in his purple and gold with crimson 
spots, wears a more splendid armour than thy 
russet and silver mottled with black, but thine is 
the kinglier nature. His courage and skill com- 
pared with thine 

"Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine." 

The old salmon of the sea who begot thee, 
long ago, in these inland waters, became a back- 
slider, descending again to the ocean, and grew 
gross and heavy with coarse feeding. But thou, 
unsalted salmon of the foaming floods, not land- 
locked, as men call thee, but choosing of thine 
own free will to dwell on a loftier level, in the 
pure, swift current of a living stream, hast grown 
in grace and risen to a higher life. Thou art not 
to be measured by quantity, but by quality, and 
thy five pounds of pure vigour will outweigh a 
score of pounds of flesh less vitalized by spirit. 
Thou feedest on the flies of the air, and thy food 
is transformed into an aerial passion for flight, as 
thou springest across the pool, vaulting toward 
the sky. Thine eyes have grown large and keen 
by peering through the foam, and the feathered 
hook that can deceive thee must be deftly tied and 
delicately cast. Thy tail and fins, by ceaseless 
conflict with the rapids, have broadened and 
strengthened, so that they can flash thy slender 
body like a living arrow up the fall. As Lancelot 
among the knights, so art thou among the fish, 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 243 

the plain -armoured hero, the sunburnt champion 
of all the water-folk. 

Every morning and evening Graygown and I 
would go out for ouananiche, and sometimes we 
caught plenty and sometimes few, but we never 
came back without a good catch of happiness. 
There were certain places where the fish liked to 
stay. For example, we always looked for one at 
the lower corner of a big rock, very close to it, 
where he could poise himself easily on the edge of 
the strong downward stream. Another likely 
place was a straight run of water, swift, but not 
too swift, with a sunken stone in the middle. The 
ouananiche does not like crooked, twisting water. 
An even current is far more comfortable, for then 
he discovers just how much effort is needed to 
balance against it, and keeps up the movement 
mechanically, as if he were half asleep. But his 
favourite place is under one of the floating islands 
of thick foam that gather in the corners below the 
falls. The matted flakes give a grateful shelter 
from the sun, I fancy, and almost all game-fish 
love to lie in the shade ; but the chief reason why 
the ouananiche haunt the drifting white mass is 
because it is full of flies and gnats, beaten down 
by the spray of the cataract, and sprinkled all 
through the foam like plums in a cake. To this 
natural confection the little salmon, lurking in his 
corner, plays the part of Jack Horner all day 
long, and never wearies. 



244 LITTLE RIVERS 

" See that belle brou down below there!" said 
Ferdinand, as we scrambled over the huge rocks 
at the foot of the falls ; " there ought to be salmon 
there en masse.'''' Yes, there were the sharp noses 
picking out the unfortunate insects, and the broad 
tails waving lazily through the foam as the fish 
turned in the water. At this season of the year, 
when summer is nearly ended, and every ouana- 
niche in the Grande Ddcharge has tasted feathers 
and seen a hook, it is useless to attempt to delude 
them with the large, gaudy flies which the fishing- 
tackle maker recommends. There are only two 
successful methods of angling now. The first of 
these I tried, and by casting delicately with a tiny 
brown trout-fly tied on a gossamer strand of gut, 
captured a pair of fish weighing about three 
pounds each. They fought against the spring of 
the four-ounce rod for nearly half an hour before 
Ferdinand could slip the net around them. But 
there was another and a broader tail still waving 
disdainfully on the outer edge of the foam. ' ' And 
now," said the gallant Ferdinand, " the turn is to 
madame, that she should prove her fortune ; attend 
but amoment, madame, while I seek the sauterelle." 

This was the second method : the grasshopper 
was attached to the hook, and casting the line 
well out across the pool, Ferdinand put the rod 
into Graygown's hands. She stood poised upon 
a pinnacle of rock, like patience on a monument, 
waiting for a bite. It came. There was a slow, 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 245 

gentle pull at the line, answered by a quick jerk 
of the rod, and a noble fish flashed into the air. 
Four pounds and a half at least! He leaped 
again and again, shaking the drops from his sil- 
very sides. He rushed up the rapids as if he had 
determined to return to the lake, and down again 
as if he had changed his plans and determined to 
go to the Saguenay. He sulked in the deep wa- 
ter and rubbed his nose against the rocks. He 
did his best to treat that treacherous grasshopper 
as the whale served Jonah. But Graygown, 
through all her little screams and shouts of excite- 
ment, was steady and sage. She never gave the 
fish an inch of slack line ; and at last he lay glit- 
tering on the rocks, with the black St. Andrew's 
crosses clearly marked on his plump sides, and 
the iridescent spots gleaming on his small shapely 
head. " Une belle ! " cried Ferdinand, as he held 
up the fish in triumph, " and it is madame who 
has the good fortune. She understands well to 
take the large fish — is it not? " Graygown stepped 
demurely down from her pinnacle, and as we 
drifted down the pool in the canoe, under the 
mellow evening sky, her conversation betrayed 
not a trace of the pride that a victorious fisher-man 
would have shown. On the contrary, she insisted 
that angling was an affair of chance — which was 
consoling, though I knew it was not the whole — 
and that the smaller fish were just as pleasant 
to catch and better to eat, after all. 



246 LITTLE RIVERS 

For a generous rival commend me to a woman ; 
and if I must compete, let it be with one who 
has the grace to dissolve the bitter of defeat in 
the honey of a mutual self-congratulation. 

We had a garden, and our favourite path 
through it was the portage leading around the 
falls. We travelled it very frequently, making 
an excuse of idle errands to the steamboat-landing 
on the lake, and sauntering along the trail as if 
school were out and would never keep again. It 
was the season of fruits rather than of flowers. 
Nature was reducing the decorations of her table 
to make room for the banquet. She offered us 
berries instead of blossoms. 

There were the light coral clusters of the dwarf 
cornel set in whorls of pointed leaves ; and the 
deep blue bells of the Clintonia borealis (which 
the White Mountain people call the bearberry; 
and I hope the name will stick, for it smacks of 
the woods, and it is a shame to leave so free and 
wild a plant under the burden of a Latin name) ; 
and the gray, crimson-veined berries for which 
the Canada May-flower had exchanged its feathery 
white bloom ; and the ruby drops of the twisted 
stalk hanging like jewels along its bending stem. 
On the three-leaved table which once carried the 
gay flower of the wake-robin there was a scarlet 
lump like a red pepper escaped to the forest and 
run wild. The partridge-vine was full of rosy 
provision for the birds. The dark, tiny leaves of 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 247 

the creeping snowberry were all sprinkled over 
with delicate drops of spicy foam. There were a 
few belated raspberries, and, if we chose to go 
out into the burnt ground, we could find blueber- 
ries in plenty. 

But there was still bloom enough to give that 
festal air without which the most abundant feast 
seems coarse and vulgar. The pale gold of the 
loosestrife had faded, but the deeper yellow of the 
goldenrod had begun to take its place. The blue 
banners of the fleur-de-lis had vanished from be- 
side the springs, but the purple of the asters was 
appearing. Closed gentians kept their secret in- 
violate, and bluebells trembled above the rocks. 
The quaint pinkish-white flowers of the turtle- 
head showed in wet places, and instead of the lilac 
racemes of the purple-fringed orchis, which had 
disappeared with midsummer, we found now the 
slender braided spikes of the lady's-tresses, latest 
and lowliest of the orchids, pale and pure as nuns 
of the forest, and exhaling a celestial fragrance. 
There is a secret pleasure in finding these delicate 
flowers in the rough heart of the wilderness. It 
is like discovering the veins of poetry in the char- 
acter of a guide or a lumberman. And to be able 
to call the plants by name makes them a hundred- 
fold more sweet and intimate. Naming things is 
one of the oldest and simplest of human pastimes. 
Children play at it with their dolls and toy ani- 
mals. In fact, it was the first game ever played 



248 LITTLE RIVERS 

on earth, for the Creator who planted the garden 
eastward in Eden knew well what would please 
the childish heart of man when he brought all 
the new-made creatures to Adam, " to see what 
he would call them." 

Our rustic bouquet graced the table under the 
white birches, while we sat by the fire and watched 
our four men at the work of the camp — Joseph 
and Raoul chopping wood in the distance ; Fran- 
cois slicing juicy rashers from the flitch of bacon ; 
and Ferdinand, the chef, heating the frying-pan 
in preparation for supper. 

" Have you ever thought," said Graygown, in 
a contented tone of voice, " that this is the only 
period of our existence when we attain to the lux- 
ury of a French cook? " 

" And one with the grand manner, too," I re- 
plied, " for he never fails to ask what it is that 
madame desires to eat to-day, as if the larder of 
Lucullus were at his disposal, though he knows 
well enough that the only choice lies between 
broiled fish and fried fish, or bacon with eggs and 
a rice omelet. But I like the fiction of a lordly 
ordering of the repast. How much better it is 
than having to eat what is flung before you at a 
summer boarding-house by a scornful waitress!" 

" Another thing that pleases me," continued 
my lady, "is the unbreakableness of the dishes. 
There are no nicks in the edges of the best plates 
here. And oh, it is a happy thing to have a home 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 249 

without bric-a-brac. There is nothing here that 
needs to be dusted." 

" And no engagements for to-morrow," I ejac- 
ulated. " Dishes that can't be broken, and plans 
that can— that's the ideal of housekeeping." 

" And then," added my philosopher in skirts, 
" it is certainly refreshing to get away from all 
one's relations for a little while." 

" But how do you make that out? " I asked in 
mild surprise. " What are you going to do with 
me?" 

" Oh," said she, with a fine air of indepen- 
dence, " I don't count you. You are not a rela- 
tion, only a connection by marriage." 

"Well, my dear," I answered between the 
meditative puffs of my pipe, " it is good to con- 
sider the advantages of our present situation. 
We shall soon come into the frame of mind of the 
Sultan of Morocco when he camped in the Vale 
of Rabat. The place pleased him so well that he 
staid until the very pegs of his tent took root and 
grew up into a grove of trees around his pavilion. " 



II 

KENOGAMI 

The guides were a little restless under the idle 
regime of our lazy camp, and urged us to set out 
upon some adventure. Ferdinand was like the 



250 LITTLE RIVERS 

uncouth swain in Lycidas. Sitting upon the bun- 
dles of camp equipage on the shore, and crying, 

"To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new," 

he led us forth to seek the famous fishing- grounds 
on Lake Kenogami. 

We skirted the eastern end of Lake St. John 
in our two canoes, and pushed up La Belle Riviere 
to Hebertville, where all the children turned out 
to follow our procession through the village. It 
was like the train that tagged after the Pied Piper 
of Hamelin. We embarked again, surrounded by 
an admiring throng, at the bridge where the main 
street crossed a little stream, and paddled up it, 
through a score of back yards and a stretch of 
reedy meadows, where the wild and tame ducks 
fed together, tempting the sportsman to sins of 
ignorance. We crossed the placid Lac Vert, and 
after a carry of a mile along the high road toward 
Chicoutimi, turned down a steep hill and pitched 
our tents on a crescent of silver sand, with the 
long, fair water of Kenogami before us. 

It is amazing to see how quickly these woodsmen 
can make a camp. Each one knew precisely his 
share of the enterprise. One sprang to chop a 
dry spruce-log into fuel for a quick fire, and fell 
a harder tree to keep us warm through the night. 
Another stripped a pile of boughs from a balsam 
for the beds. Another cut the tent-poles from a 
neighbouring thicket. Another unrolled the bun- 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 251 

dies and made ready the cooking-utensils. As if 
by magic the miracle of the camp was accom- 
plished : 

" The bed was made, the room was fit, 
By punctual eve the stars were lit" — 

but Graygown always insists upon completing 
that quotation from Stevenson in her own voice, 
for this is the way it ends : 

" When we put up, my ass and I, 
At God's green caravanserai." 

Our permanent camp was another day's voyage 
down the lake, on a beach opposite the Point 
Ausable. There the water was contracted to a 
narrow strait, and in the swift current, close to 
the point, the great trout had fixed their spawn- 
ing-bed from time immemorial. It was the first 
week in September, and the magnates of the lake 
were already assembling — the Common Council- 
men and the Mayor and the whole Committee of 
Seventy. There were giants in that place, rolling 
lazily about, and chasing each other on the sur- 
face of the water. "Look, m'sieu'!" cried 
Francois, in excitement, as we lay at anchor in 
the gray morning twilight; "one like a horse 
has just leaped behind us ; I assure you, big like 
a horse ! " 

But the fish were shy and dour. Old Caston- 
nier, the guardian of the lake, lived in his hut on 
the shore, and flogged the water, early and late, 



252 LITTLE RIVERS 

every day with his home-made flies. He was 
anchored in his dugout close beside us, and 
grinned with delight as he saw his over-educated 
trout refuse my best casts. "They are here, 
m'sieu', for you can see them," he said, by way 
of discouragement, " but it is difficult to take 
them. Do you not find it so? " 

In the back of my fly-book I discovered a tiny 
phantom minnow, — a dainty affair of varnished 
silk, as light as a feather, — and quietly attached 
it to the leader in place of the tail-fly. Then the 
fun began. 

One after another the big fish dashed at that 
deception, and we played and netted them until 
our score was thirteen, weighing altogether thirty- 
five pounds, and the largest five pounds and a 
half. The guardian was mystified and disgusted. 
He looked on for a while in silence, and then 
pulled up anchor and clattered ashore. He must 
have made some inquiries and reflections during 
the day, for that night he paid a visit to our camp. 
After telling bear-stories and fish-stories for an 
hour or two by the fire, he rose to depart, and 
tapping his forefinger solemnly upon my shoul- 
der, delivered himself as follows : 

' ' You can say a proud thing when you go home, 
m'sieu'— that you have beaten the old Castonnier. 
There are not many fishermen who can say that. 
But, "he added with confidential emphasis, "c'etait 
voire sacre p Hit poisson qui a fait cela" 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 253 

That was a touch of human nature, my rusty 
old guardian, more welcome to me than all the 
morning's catch. Is there not always a " con- 
founded little minnow" responsible for our fail- 
ures? Did you ever see a school-boy tumble on 
the ice without stooping immediately to rebuckle 
the strap of his skates? And would not Ignotus 
have painted a masterpiece if he could have found 
good brushes and a proper canvas ? Life's short- 
comings would be bitter indeed if we could not 
find excuses for them outside of ourselves. And 
as for life's successes— well, it is certainly whole- 
some to remember how many of them are due to 
a fortunate position and the proper tools. 

Our tent was on the border of a coppice of 
young trees. It was pleasant to be awakened by 
a convocation of birds at sunrise, and to watch 
the shadows of the leaves dance out upon our 
translucent roof of canvas. 

All the birds in the bush are early, but there 
are so many of them that it is difficult to believe 
that every one can be rewarded with a worm. 
Here in Canada those little people of the air who 
appear as transient guests of spring and autumn 
in the Middle States are in their summer home 
and breeding-place. Warblers, named for the 
magnolia and the myrtle, chestnut-sided, bay- 
breasted, blue-backed, and black-throated, flutter 
and creep along the branches with simple lisping 
music. Kinglets, ruby-crowned and golden- 



254 LITTLE RIVERS 

crowned, tiny, brilliant sparks of life, twitter 
among the trees, breaking occasionally into clear- 
er, sweeter songs. Companies of redpolls and 
crossbills pass chirping through the thickets, bus- 
ily seeking their food. The fearless, familiar 
chickadee repeats his name merrily while he leads 
his family to explore every nook and cranny of 
the wood. Cedar waxwings, sociable wanderers, 
arrive in numerous flocks. The Canadians call 
them " recollets" because they wear a brown crest 
of the same colour as the hoods of the monks 
who came with the first settlers to New France. 
They are a songless tribe, although their quick, 
reiterated call as they take to flight has given them 
the name of chatterers. The beautiful tree-spar- 
rows and the pine-siskins are more melodious, and 
the slate-coloured juncos, flitting about the camp, 
are as garrulous as chippy-birds. All these varied 
notes come and go through the tangle of morning 
dreams. And now the noisy blue- jay is calling 
"Thief, thief thief!" in the distance, and a 
pair of great pileated woodpeckers with crimson 
crests are laughing loudly in the swamp over some 
family joke. But listen ! what is that harsh creak- 
ing note ? It is the cry of the Northern shrike, of 
whom tradition says that he catches little birds 
and impales them on sharp thorns. At the sound 
of his voice the concert closes suddenly and the 
singers vanish into thin air. The hour of music 
is over ; the commonplace of day has begun. And 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 255 

there is my lady Graygown, already up and 
dressed, standing by the breakfast-table and 
laughing at my belated appearance. 

But the birds were not our only musicians at 
Kenogami. French Canada is one of the ances- 
tral homes of song. Here you can still listen to 
those quaint ballads which were sung centuries 
ago in Normandie and Provence. "A la Claire 
Fontaine" "Dans Paris y a-t-une Brune plus 
Belle que le Jour" " Sur le Pont d'Avignon," 
"En Roulant ma Boule" "La Poulette Grise," 
and a hundred other folk-songs linger among the 
peasants and voyageurs of these Northern woods. 
You may hear 

"Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre — 
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine," 



and 



" Isabeau s'y promene 
Le long de son jardin," 



chanted in the farm-house or the lumber shanty, 
to the tunes which have come down from an un- 
known source and never lost their echo in the 
hearts of the people. 

Our Ferdinand was a perfect fountain of music. 
He had a clear tenor voice, and solaced every task 
and shortened every voyage with melody. "A 
song, Ferdinand, a jolly song," the other men 
would say, as the canoes went sweeping down the 
quiet lake. And then the leader would strike up 



256 LITTLE RIVERS 

a well-known air, and his companions would come 
in on the refrain, keeping time with the stroke of 
their paddles. Sometimes it would be a merry 

ditty : 

" My father had no girl but me, 
And yet he sent me off to sea ; 
Leap, my little Cecilia." 

Or perhaps it was : 

" I've danced so much the livelong day, — 
Dance, my sweetheart, let's be gay, — 
I've fairly danced my shoes away, — 

Till evening. 
Dance, my pretty, dance once more ; 
Dance until we break the floor." 

But more frequently the song was touched with a 
plaintive, pleasant melancholy. The minstrel told 
how he had gone into the woods and heard the 
nightingale, and she had confided to him that 
lovers are often unhappy. The story of La Belle 
Frangoise was repeated in minor cadences — how 
her sweetheart sailed away to the wars, and when 
he came back the village church bells were ring- 
ing, and he said to himself that Francoise had 
been faithless and the chimes were for her mar- 
riage ; but when he entered the church it was her 
funeral that he saw, for she had died of love. It 
is strange how sorrow charms us when it is dis- 
tant and visionary. Even when we are happiest 
we enjoy making music 

"Of old, unhappy, far-off things." 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 257 

" What is that song which you are singing, 
Ferdinand? " asks my lady, as she hears him hum- 
ming behind her in the canoe. 

' ' Ah, madame, it is the chanson of a young 
man who demands of his blonde why she will not 
marry him. He says that he has waited long 
time, and the flowers are falling from the rose- 
tree, and he is very sad," 

" And does she give a reason? " 

" Yes, madame — that is to say, a reason of a cer- 
tain sort ; she declares that she is not quite ready ; 
he must wait until the rose-tree adorns itself again. " 

" And what is the end—do they get married at 
last? " 

" But I do not know, madame. The chanson 
does not go so far. It ceases with the complaint 
of the young man. And it is a very uncertain 
affair, — this affair of the heart, — is it not? " 

Then, as if he turned from such perplexing 
mysteries to something plain and sure and easy to 
understand, he breaks out into the jolliest of all 
Canadian songs : 

" My bark canoe that flies, that flies, 
Hola ! my bark canoe ! " 



III 

THE ISLAND POOL 

Among the mountains there is a gorge. And 
in the gorge there is a river. And in the river 



258 LITTLE RIVERS 

there is a pool. And in the pool there is an is- 
land. And on the island for four happy days there 
was a camp. 

It was by no means an easy matter to establish 
ourselves in that lonely place. The river, though 
not remote from civilization, is practically inacces- 
sible for nine miles of its course by reason of the 
steepness of its banks, which are long, shaggy 
precipices, and the fury of its current, in which 
no boat can live. We heard its voice as we ap- 
proached through the forest, and could hardly tell 
whether it was far away or near. 

There is a perspective of sound as well as of 
sight, and one must have some idea of the size of 
a noise before one can judge of its distance. A 
mosquito's horn in a dark room may seem like a 
trumpet on the battlements ; and the tumult of a 
mighty stream heard through an unknown stretch 
of woods may appear like the babble of a moun- 
tain-brook close at hand. 

But when we came out upon the bald forehead 
of a burnt cliff and looked down, we realized the 
grandeur and beauty of the unseen voice that we 
had been following. A river of splendid strength 
went leaping through the chasm five hundred feet 
below us, and at the foot of two snow-white falls, 
in an oval of dark-topaz water, traced with curves 
of floating foam, lay the solitary island. 

The broken path was like a ladder. " How 
shall we ever get down?" sighed Graygown, as 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 259 

we dropped from rock to rock ; and at the bottom 
she looked up, sighing, " I know we never can get 
back again." There was not a foot of ground on 
the shores level enough for a tent. Our canoe 
ferried us over, two at a time, to the island. It 
was about a hundred paces long, composed of 
round, coggly stones, with just one patch of 
smooth sand at the lower end. There was not a 
tree left upon it larger than an alder-bush. The 
tent-poles must be cut far up on the mountain- 
sides, and every bough for our beds must be car- 
ried down the ladder of rocks. But the men were 
gay at their work, singing like mocking-birds. 
After all, the glow of life comes from friction with 
its difficulties. If we cannot find them at home, 
we sally abroad and create them, just to warm up 
our mettle. 

The ouananiche in the island pool were superb, 
astonishing, incredible. We stood on the cobble- 
stones at the upper end and cast our little flies 
across the sweeping stream, and for three days the 
fish came crowding in to fill the barrel of pickled 
salmon for our guides' winter use ; and the score 
rose — twelve, twenty-one, thirty-two ; and the size 
of the "biggest fish "steadily mounted— four 
pounds, four and a half, five, five and three quar- 
ters. " Precisely almost six pounds," said Fer- 
dinand, holding the scales ; " but we may call him 
six, m'sieu', for if it had been to-morrow that we 
had caught him he would certainly have gained 



2 6o LITTLE RIVERS 

the other ounce." And yet why should I repeat 
the fisherman's folly of writing down the record 
of that marvelous catch? We always do it, but 
we know that it is a vain thing. Few listen to 
the tale, and none accept it. Does not Christo- 
pher North, reviewing the Salmonia of Sir Hum- 
phry Davy, mock and jeer unfeignedly at the fish- 
stories of that most reputable writer? But on 
the very next page old Christopher himself mean- 
ders on into a perilous narrative of the day when 
he caught a whole cart-load of trout in a High- 
land loch. Incorrigible, happy inconsistency! 
Slow to believe others, and full of skeptical in- 
quiry, fond man never doubts one thing — that 
somewhere in the world a tribe of gentle readers 
will be discovered to whom his fish-stories will 
appear credible. 

One of our days on the island was Sunday — a 
day of rest in a week of idleness. We had a few 
books, for there are some in existence which will 
stand the test of being brought into close contact 
with nature. Are not John Burroughs's cheerful, 
kindly essays full of woodland truth and com- 
panionship? Can you not carry a whole library 
of musical philosophy in your pocket in Matthew 
Arnold's volume of selections from Wordsworth? 
And could there be a better sermon for a Sabbath 
in the wilderness than Mrs. Slosson's immortal 
story of Fishin* Jimmy ? 

But to be very frank about the matter, the camp 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 261 

is not stimulating to the studious side of my mind. 
Charles Lamb, as usual, has said what I feel: 
" I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. 
I cannot settle my spirits to it." 

There are blueberries growing abundantly 
among the rocks — huge clusters of them, bloomy 
and luscious as the grapes of Eshcol. The blue- 
berry is nature's compensation for the ruin of for- 
est-fires. It grows best where the woods have 
been burnt away and the soil is too poor to raise 
another crop of trees. Surely it is an innocent 
and harmless pleasure to wander along the hill- 
sides gathering these wild fruits, as the Master 
and his disciples once walked through the fields 
and plucked the ears of corn, never caring what 
the Pharisees thought of that new way of keeping 
the Sabbath. 

And here is a bed of moss beside a dashing 
rivulet, inviting us to rest and be thankful. 
Hark! There is a white-throated sparrow, on a 
little tree across the river, whistling his afternoon 
song 

" In linked sweetness long drawn out." 

Down in Maine they call him the Peabody-bird, 
because his tones sound to them like " Old man 
— Peabody, Peabody, Peabody." In New Bruns- 
wick the Scotch settlers say that he sings, "Lost — 
lost — Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy." But here 
in his Northern home I think we can understand 



262 LITTLE RIVERS 

him better. He is singing again and again, with 
a cadence that never wearies, " Sweet — sweet — 
Canada, Canada , Canada!" The Canadians, 
when they came across the sea, remembering the 
nightingale of southern France, baptized this lit- 
tle gray minstrel their rossignol, and the country 
ballads are full of his praise. Every land has its 
nightingale, if we only have the heart to hear him. 
How distinct his voice is ! — how personal, how 
confidential, as if he had a message for us ! 

There is a breath of fragrance on the cool, shady 
air beside our little stream that seems familiar. 
It is the first week of September. Can it be that 
the twin-flower of June, the delicate Linncea bo- 
realis, is blooming again ? Yes, here is the thread- 
like stem lifting its two frail pink bells above the 
bed of shining leaves. How dear an early flower 
seems when it comes back again and unfolds its 
beauty in a St. Martin's summer! How delicate 
and suggestive is the faint, magical odour! It is 
like a renewal of the dreams of youth. 

" And need we ever grow old? " asked my lady 
Graygown, as she sat that evening with the twin- 
flower on her breast, watching the stars come out 
along the edge of the cliffs, and tremble on the 
hurrying tide of the river. " Must we grow old 
as well as gray? Is the time coming when all 
life will be commonplace and practical and gov- 
erned by a dull ' of course ' ? Shall we not al- 
ways find adventures and romances, and a few 



THE SIGN OF THE BALSAM-BOUGH 263 

blossoms returning even when the season grows 
late? " 

" At least," I answered, " let us believe in the 
possibility, for to doubt it is to destroy it. If we 
can only come back to nature together every year, 
and consider the flowers and the birds, and con- 
fess our faults and mistakes and our unbelief un- 
der these silent stars, and hear the river murmur- 
ing our absolution, we shall always be young, no 
matter how long we live. We shall have a com- 
mon treasure of sweet memories ; like the twin- 
flower, always a double blossom on a single stem. 
And we shall go into the other world with a love 
which will make it worth while to be immortal, 
and lead us on through endless adventures as true 
comrades forever." 



A SONG AFTER SUNDOWN 



THE WOOD-NOTES OF THE 
VEERY 



The moonbeams over Arno's vale in silver flood 
were pouring 

When first I heard the nightingale a long-lost 
love deploring : 

So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded strange 
and eerie ; 

I longed to hear a simpler strain, — the wood- 
notes of the veery. 

The laverock sings a bonny lay above the Scottish 

heather ; 
It sprinkles down from far away like light and 

love together; 
He drops the golden notes to greet his brooding 

mate, his dearie ; 
I only know one song more sweet, — the vespers 

of the veery. 



268 LITTLE RIVERS 

In English gardens green and bright, and full 

of fruity treasure, 
I heard the blackbird with delight repeat his 

merry measure ; 
The ballad was a lively one, the tune was loud 

and cheery, 
And yet with every setting sun I listened for the 

veery. 

Oh, far away, and far away, the tawny thrush is 

singing; 
New England woods at close of day with that 

clear chant are ringing; 
And when my light of life is low, and heart and 

flesh are weary, 
I fain would hear, before I go, the wood-notes of 

the veery. 



S8SHS 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Affection, misplaced: an in- 
stance of, 128, 129. 

Altnaharra, 91. 

Alt-Prags, the baths of: their 
venerable appearance, 162. 

Ambrose, of Milan : his com- 
ment to the grayling, 226. 

Ampersand: derivation of the 
name, 58 ; the mountain, 
58 ; the lake, 72 ; the river, 

58-. 

Ananias : a point named after 
him, 203. 

Anglers: the pretensions of 
rustic, exposed, 24; a group 
of, 47, 48; a friendly folk, 
119, 120. 

Angling: its attractions, 3, 
4 ; an education in, 36 ff. ; 
Dr. Paley's attachment to, 
112 ; a benefaction to fish, 
130. 

Antinous: the cause of his 
death, 13. 

Architecture : prevailing style 
on the Ristigouche, 119; 
the superiority of a tent to 
other forms of, 237 ; domes- 
tic types in Canada, 191. 

Arnold, Matthew : quoted, 
116. 

Aussee, 215. 



Baldness: in mountains and 

men, 69. 
Barrie, J. M., 81. 
Bartlett, Virgil: a tribute to 

his memory, 60. 
Bear-stories : their ubiquity, 

Bellingbausen, von Munch: 

quoted, 235. 
Birds: a good way to make 
their acquaintance, 19, 20; 
differences in character, 21; 
a convocation of, 253. 
Birds named : 

Blackbird, 268. 

Bluebird, 4, 21. 

Cat-bird, 19. 

Cedar-bird, 254. 

Chewink, 4, 20. 

Chickadee, 254. 

Crossbill, 254. 

Crow, hoodie-, 95. 

Cuckoo, 153. 

Ducks, "Betseys," 184. 

Eagle, 92. 

Grouse, ruffed, 67. 

Gull, 184. 

Jay, blue-, 21, 254. 

Kingfisher, 21, 133, 184. 

Kinglet, ruby, and gold- 
en-crowned, 253, 254. 

Laverock, 267. 



272 



INDEX 



Meadow-lark, 4. 
Nightingale, 262, 267. 
Oriole, 20. 

Owl, great horned, 52. 
Pewee, wood-, 20. 
Pine-siskin, 254. 
Redpoll, 254. 
Robin, 3, 20. 
Sand-piper, spotted, 19. 
Sheldrake, 64. 
Shrike, 254. 
Sky-lark, 153, 267. 
Sparrow, song-, 4, 20. 
Sparrow, tree-, 254. 
Sparrow, white-throated, 

133, 261. 
Thistle-bird, 3. 
Thrush, hermit, 4, 22. 
Thrush, Wilson's, 22, 

267, 268. 
Thrush, wood, 22. 
Veery, 22, 267, 268. 
Warbler, black-throated 

green, 67. 
Warbler, various kinds 

in Canada, 253. 
Woodpecker, 25. 
Woodpecker, great pile- 

ated, 254. 
Woodpecker, red-head- 
ed, 67. 
Yellow- throat, Mary- 
land, 20. 
Bishops : the proper costume 
for, 24 ; a place frequented 
by, 144. 
Black, William: his "Prin- 
cess ofThule," 81 ff. 
Black fly : his diabolical na- 
ture, 197. 
Blackmore, R. D. : quoted, 

33- 
Blunderhead : a winged idiot, 

196. 
Boats : Adirondack, 63. 
Bonaparte, Napoleon: as a 

comrade on foot, 13. 
Bridges, Robert : quoted, 78. 
Burroughs, John : his views 



on walking, 59; his essays, 
260. 
Byron, George, Lord: mis- 
quoted, 223. 

Cambridge: looks best from 
the rear, 17. 

Camping-out: a first experi- 
ence, 50-53; lessons to be 
learned from it, 53 ; discre- 
tion needed in, 238; skill 
of guides in preparation for, 
250. 

Character: expressed in looks, 
11. 

Chub : a mean fish, 218. 

Cities: enlivened by rivers, 
16, 17. 

Conservatism : Scotch style 
of, 89. 

Contentment: an example of, 
249. 

Conversation: best between 
two, 103; the most valua- 
ble kind, 105 ; egoism the 
salt of, 128 ; the fine art of, 
134; current coin in, 198. 

Cook : the blessing of having 
a good-humoured, 184, 185. 

Cortina, 145-151. 

Cotton, Charles : quoted, 226. 

Courtesy : in a custom-house 
officer, 143 ; among the 
Tyrolese peasants, 168 ; of 
a French Canadian, 185. 

Cow-boy : pious remark of a, 
27. 

Cowley, Abraham: on little- 
ness, 14. 

Credulity: of anglers in re- 
gard to their own fish- 
stories, 259, 260. 

Crockett, S. R. : quoted, 23, 
81. 



Darwin, Charles : quoted, 25. 
Davy, Sir Humphrey : quot- 
ed, 112. 



INDEX 



273 



Deer-hunting: in the Adi- 

rondacks, 65. 
Depravity, total: in trout, 

97' 

Diogenes : as a bedfellow, 13. 
Dolomites : described, 139, 

140 ff. 
Driving: four-in-hand, 141; 

after dinner, 142 ; the 

French Canadian idea of, 

190. 

Economy: an instance of, 

192. 
Education: a wise method 

of, 36. 
Education : in a canoe, 186. 
Edwards, Jonathan : his love 

of nature, 25. 
Egoism, modest: the salt of 

conversation, 128. 
Epics : not to be taken as 

discouragement to lyrics, 

27. 
Epigrams : of small practical 

value, 105. 

Failures : the philosophic way 

of accounting for, 253. 
Fame : the best kind of, 148. 
Farming : demoralized on the 

Ristigouche, 117, 118. 
Fashion : unnecessary for a 
well-dressed woman to fol- 
low, 151. 
Fatherhood : the best type of, 

36 ; its significance, 187. 
Fiction : its uses, 80, 81, 85. 
Fish: fact that the largest 

always escape, 123. 
Flowers named : 

Alpenrosen, 138, 153, 

169. 
Anemone, 4. 
Arrow-head, 10. 
Aster, 19, 247. 
Eearberry (Clintonia bo- 
realis), 246. 



Bee-balm, 19. 
Bluebell, 247. 
Canada May-flower, 246. 
Cardinal-flower, 19. 
Cinquefoil, 19. 
Clover, 153. 
Crowfoot, 19. 
Cyclamen, 183, 229. 
Dahlia, 191. 
Daisy, ox-eye, 10. 
Dandelion, 3. 
Dwarf cornel, 246. 
Fireweed, 193. 
Fleur-de-lis, 182, 247. 
Forget-me-not, 153. 
Fuchsia, 95. 
Gentian, Alpine, 153. 
Gentian, closed, 19, 205, 

247. 
Goldenrod, 19, 247. 
Hare-bell, 19. 
Heather, 15, 79 ff". 
Hepatica, 18. 
Hollyhock, 191. 
Honeysuckle, 91. 
Jewel-weed, 19, 205. 
Joe-Pye-weed, 205. 
Knot-weed, 10. 
Lady's-tresses, 247. 
Lilac, 33, 229. 
Loose-strife, yellow, 19, 

247. 
Marigold, 191. 
Meadow-rue, 182. 
Orchis, purple-fringed, 

19, 183, 247. 
Pansy, 168. 
Partridge-berry, 246. 
Polygala, fringed, 83. 
Pyrola, 182. 
Rose, 33, 95, 103. 
Santa Lucia, 153. 
Self-heal, 19. 
Snowberry, 247. 
Spring beauty, 18. 
St.-John's-wort, 19. 
Star-grass, 19. 
Tansy, 34. 
Trillium, painted, 18. 



274 



INDEX 



Tulip, 3. 

Turtle-head, 247. 

Twinflower, 13, 262. 

Violet, 18. 

Wake-robin, 246. 
Flowers: Nature's embroid- 
ery, 19, 152, 182, 246; the 
pleasure of knowing by- 
name, 247; second bloom 
of, 262. 
Forests : the mid-day silence 
of, 67; flowers in, 153, 182, 
246, 247. 
Friendship : the great not al- 
ways adapted for it, 13; 
pleasure in proximity, 11 ; 
a celestial gift, 102. 

Gay, John : quoted, 7. 

Germans : _ their_ sentiment, 
157; their genius for thor- 
oughness, 159; their po- 
liteness, 227. 

Gilbert, W. S. : quoted, 35. 

Goat's-milk : the proper way 
to drink it, 138; obliging 
disposition of the goat in 
regard to it, 170. 

Gray, Thomas: quoted, 21. 

Grayling: described, 225, 226. 

Gross-Venediger : the, 169- 
172. 

Guides : Adirondack, 63 ; 
Canadian, 184-187. 

Halleck, Fitz-Greene: quot- 
ed, 197. 

Hallstatt, 220. 

Haste: the folly of, 121. 

Hazlitt, William : quoted, 
212. 

Heine, Heinrich : quoted, 
183. 

Hoosier Schoolmaster, the: 
the solidity of his views, 
11. 

Hornet : the unexpected qual- 
ity of his sting, 66. 



Horse-yacht : a description 
of, 114; drawbacks and 
advantages, 120. 

Hospitality: in a Highland 
cottage, 95 ; among an- 
glers, 119; in an Alpine 
hut, 170. 

Housekeeping : the ideal, 
249. 

Human nature : best seen in 
little ways, 25 ; a touch of, 

253- 
Humour : American, difficult 
for foreigners, 145 ; plain, 
best enjoyed out-of-doors, 



Idealist: a boy is the true, 

42> 43- 

Ideals : the advantage of 
cherishing, 192. 

Idleness : occasionally profit- 
able, 27, 28. 

Immortality: the hope of, 
106; love makes it worth 
having, 263. 

Indian : the noble, 198. 

Insects: classified according 
to malignity, 196 ff. 

Ischl, 223. 



James, Henry: his accuracy 
in words, 24. 

Johnson, Robert Under- 
wood: quoted, 18. 

Kenogami, Lake, 249 ff. 

Lairg, 91. 

Lake George, 37 ff. 

Lamb, Charles : his poor 
opinion of aqueducts, 10; 
his disinclination to read- 
ing out-of-doors, 261. 

Landro, 160. 

Lanier, Sidney: quoted, 22. 

Lienz, 163 ff. 



INDEX 



275 



Life : more in it than making 
a living, 28. 

Littleness : praised, 14. 

London: the way to see, 17. 

Longfellow, Henry Wads- 
worth: quoted, 134. 

Love: a boy's introduction 
to, 42 ; a safe course in, 82; 
the true meaning of, 109; 
uncertainty of its course, 

257- 
Lowell, James Russell: a 

reminiscence of him, 8. 
Luck: denned, 53. 
Lucretius, T. : quoted, 14. _ 
Lumbermen: their share in 

making our homes, 210. 



Mabie, Hamilton W. : quot- 
ed, 174. 

"Maclaren, Ian,' 81. 

Manners: their charm when 
plain and good, 168. 

Marvell, Andrew : quoted, 
181, 182. 

Medicinal springs : an in- 
stance of their harmless- 
ness, 49. 

Meditation: an aid to, 131, 
132; on the building of a 
house, 210; at nightfall, 
229. 

Melvich, 93. 

Memory : associated with 
odours, 33 ; capricious, 99; 
awakened by a word, 175; 
sweetest when shared by 
two, 263. 

Metapedia, 113. 

Midges : animated pepper, 
196. 

Milton, John: quoted, 250, 
261. 

Mint: a symbol of remem- 
brance, 34. 

Misurina, Lake, 158. 

Mosquito : his mitigating 
qualities, 196, 197. 



Mountain-climbing : charms 
of, 66 ff. ; moderation in, 
152 ; disappointment in, 
171, 172. 

Mountains : their influence, 
8; invitations to climb, 59; 
growth of trees upon them, 
68, 69; the Adirondacks, 
the Dolomites, 139 ff. ; the 
Hohe Tauern, 165 ff.; of the 
Salzkammergut, 214 ff. 

Naaman, the Syrian : his sen- 
timent about rivers, 13. 

Naming things : pleasure of, 
247. 

Navigable rivers : denned, 
So. 

Neu-Prags : the Baths of, 163. 

Noah : a question about, 134. 

Nuvolau, Mount, 152 ff. 

Old age : sympathy with 
youth, 104; the wisdom 
and beauty of, 105, 106; 
preparation for, 262, 263. 

Ouananiche, 183, 188, 189, 
201, 204, 205, 241 ff., 259. 

Oven : the shrine of the good 
housewife, 192. 

Paley, the Rev. Dr. : quoted, 

112. 
Patience : not the only virtue, 

39- 

Peasant life : the perils of, in 
the Tyrol, 166, 167. 

Perch : a good fish for nurses 
to catch, 37. 

Philosophers : a camp of, 72 ; 
their explanation of hu- 
mour, 137. 

Philosophy : of a happy life, 
105, 106; of travel, 137; of 
success, 149 ; of housekeep- 
ing, 248, 249; of perpetual 
youth, 262, 263. 

Photography : its difficulties, 



276 



INDEX 



73, 74 ; a good occupation 
for young women, 120. 

Pian, Mount, 158, 159. 

Pike, 195, 201. 

Pleasures: simple, not to be 
purchased with money, 
136. 

Plenty : a symbol of, 60. 

Prayer : the secret of peace, 
107; in a Tyrolese hut, 
170; thoughts almost as 
good as, 231. 

Preaching : under supervi- 
sion, 86. 

Predestination: an instance 
of faith in, 94. 

Prime, W. C. : quoted, 239. 

Pronunciation : courage in, 
117. 

Prosperity: should be pre- 
pared for in the time of ad- 
versity, 191, 192. 

Quarles, Francis: his em- 
blems, 33. 
Quebec, 236. 

Railway travel : beside a litde 
river, 15, 16; its general 
character, 138. 

Rapids, 179 ff. 

Relations: the advantage of 
temporary separation from, 
249 ; distinguished from 
connections by marriage, 
249. 

Religion : the best evidence 
of, 107. 

Resignation : the courage of 
old age, 106. 

Rivers: their personality, 7, 
10; in different countries, 
12 ; little ones the best, 13- 
15 ; methods of knowing 
them, 17, 26; advantages 
of their friendship, 17-23; 
their small responsibilities, 
26; pleasure of watching 



them, 132; variety of life 
upon, 189 ; disconsolate 
when dry, 199, 200; merry 
in the rain, 216 ; the voice 
of, 258. 
Rivers named : 

Abana, 13. 

iEsopus, 15, 

Allegash, 14. 

A l'Ours, 190, 193. 

Amazon, 14. 

Ampersand, 15, 57. 

Arno, 15, 17. 

Aroostook, 14. 

Ausable, 14. 

Batiscan, 12. 

Beaverkill, 14, 18. 

Blanche, 199. 

Boite, 140, 141. 

Boquet, 12. 

Cam, 17. 

Connecticut, 13. 

Dee, 101. 

Delaware, 12. 

Des Aunes, 190. 

Dove, 15. 

Drau, 163. 

Ericht, 15, 101. 

French Broad, 15. 

Glommen, 16. 

Grande Decharge, 178 
ff., 239 ff. 

Gula, 16. 

Halladale, 15. 

Hudson, 12. 

Isel, 163. 

Kaaterskill, 49. 

La Belle Riviere, 177, 
250 ff. 

La Pipe, 177. 

Lycoming, 44. 

Metapedia, 117. 

Mississippi, 14. 

Mistassini, 177. 

Mistook, 184. 

Moose, 15. 

Neversink, 14, 49. 

Niagara, 14. 

Opalescent, 52. 



INDEX 



277 



Ouiatchouan, 177. 

Patapedia, 117. 

Penobscot, 15. 

Peribonca, 15, 177, 206 ff. 

Pharpar, 13. 

Piave, 140, 141. 

Pikouabi, 177. 

Quatawamkedgwick, 
117. 

Racquette, 14. 

Rauma, 15. 

Rienz, 16, 140. 

Ristigouche, 15, 113 ff. 

Rocky Run, 45. 

Rotha, 15. 

Saguenay, 177. 

Salzacb, 15. 

Saranac, 14, 52, 60. 

Swiftwater, 14, 34, 54. 

Thames, 15, 17. 

Traun, 211 ff. 

Tweed, 15. 

Upsalquitch, 117. 

Wharfe, 181. 

Ziller, 15. 
Roberval, 177. 
Rome : the best point of view 

in, 17. 
Rudder Grange: the author 
of, 11. 

St. John, Lake: 176 ff, 236 
ff. 

Salmon : a literary, 88 ; a 
plain, 125-127; a delusive, 
130, 131 ; curious habit of 
leaping on Sunday, 133; 
manner of angling for, 125- 
127. 

Scotch character : contrasted 
with the English, 89-91 ; 
caution, 85, 86, 97; ortho- 
doxy, 98; true religion, 
105-108. 

Sea, the: disadvantages of 
loving, 8. 

Semiramis: her husband, 13. 

Seneca, L. Annseus: his ad- 
vice concerning altars, 9. 



Seriousness: may be carried 
too far, 27. 

Shakspere, William : quoted, 
234- 

Slosson, Annie Trumbull : 
her story of Fishin' Jimmy, 
260. 

Solomon : improved, 36 ; 
quoted, 86. 

Songs, French, 255 ff. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis : on 
rivers, 6 ; on friendship be- 
tween young and old, 104 ; 
his last prayer, 107, 108; 
on camping-out, 251. 

Stornoway, 83 ff. 

Sunday : reflections upon, 
131-133 ; a good way to 
spend, 260. 

Sun-fish: their supercilious- 
ness when over-fed, 37. 

Tea: preferred to whiskey, 

187. 
Tennyson, Alfred: quoted, 

11, 22, 26, 44, 116, 200. 
Tents: their superiority to 

houses, 237. 
Time, old Father: the best 
way to get along with, 120, 
121. 
Titian : his landscapes, 142. 
Toblach, Lake of, 160, 161. 
Trees: their human associa- 
tions, 8, 9 ; their growth 
on mountains, 68, 69; ad- 
visability of sparing, 191, 
192 ; on their way to mar- 
ket, 210; their personality, 
239, 240. 
Trees named : 

Alder, 45, 193, 214. 

Ash, 214. 

Balm of Gilead, 34, 191. 

Balsam, 68, 182, 238. 

Beech, 66. 

Birch, white, 45, 182, 

204, 240 ff. 
Birch, yellow, 66. 



278 



INDEX 



Cedar, white, 182, 200, 
204. 

Fir, 166, 214, 229. 

Hemlock, 13, 19, 45, 68, 
69, 238. 

Horse-chestnut, 9. 

Larch, 142, 151. 

Maple, 7, 45, 66. 

Oak, 9, 228. 

Pine, 21, 69. 

Poplar, 191. 

Pussywillow, 3, 19. 

Spruce, 13, 68, 69, 182, 
198, 200, 204, 238, 250. 
Trout-fishing: a beginning 
at, 38; a specimen of, 61; 
in Scotland, 91, 92, 96, 97; 
in the Tyrol, 158, 161; in the 
Traun, 211 ff. ; in Canada, 
122, 193 ff., 251 ff. 

Universe: no man responsi- 
ble for the charge of it, 
continuously, 27. 

Utilitarianism : a mistake, 
192. 

Venice: in warm weather, 

*37, 138- 
Veracity: affected by fish, 

202, 203. 



Virgil: quoted, 213. 



Walton, Izaak: quoted, 26, 
28, 62, 136, 218; his ill for- 
tune as a fisherman, 134. 

Warner, Charles Dudley : his 
description of an open fire, 
IS- 

Watts, Isaac : quoted, 15. 

Whitman, Walt : quoted, 
204. 

Wilson, John: his descrip- 
tion of a bishop, 24; his 
skepticism about all fish 
stories but his own, 260. 

Wish : a modest, 3, 4. 

Wolfgang, Saint: his lake, 
228 ; his good taste, 228. 

Women : prudence in ex- 
pressing an opinion about, 
14 ; more conservative than 
men, 150 ; problematic 
quality of, 235 ; generous 
rivals (in angling), 246. 

Words : their magic, 175. 

Wordsworth, William: quot- 
ed, 21, 22, 99, 184, 199. 

Youth : the secret of preserv- 
ing it, 262. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Oct. 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-2111 



